X 




Class _BEj:a_ 

Book Ji_va 



GofpghtN"_ 



COFVRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



CHRISTIAN BELIEF INTERPRETED BY 
CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 



CHRISTIAN BELIEF INTERPRETED 
BY CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 



LECTURES DELIVERED IN INDIA, CEYLON, AND JAPAN 
ON THE BARROWS FOUNDATION 



BY 

CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINAET 



With an Introductory Note 

BY 
THE VICE-CHANCELLOR OP THE UNIVERSITY OP BOMBAY 



THE BARROWS LECTURES 

1902-1903 



CHICAGO 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 

LONDON 

T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 

1905 



-^ 



\^ 



A^^ 



I Two 3op/es iifxmviiii j 



AUe 2 1905 
COPY e; 



t 



J 



Copyright 1905 
The Uni\teesity of Chicago 



Entered at Stationers' Hall 



TO THOSE 

IN INDIA, CEYLON, AND THE FAR EAST 

TO WHOM THE STUDY OF EELIGION IS PRECIOUS 

THIS ENDEAVOUR TO SET FORTH 

THE RELIGION OF JESUS CHRIST 

IS DEDICATED 

IN THE SPIRIT OF BROTHERHOOD AND WITH TRUE RESPECT 

FOE THE VARIOUS FAITHS OF MEN 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Barbows Leotubeship Foundation - - - - ix 

Peefaoe xiii 

By the Author 

Inteoductoey Note xxi 

By the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay 

Syllabus - xxvii 

LECTURE I 
The Nature of Religion 1 

LECTURE II 
The Christian Idea of God and its Relation to Expe- 
rience - ' - - - 36 

LECTURE III 
The Lord Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation op 

God - - 77 

LECTURE IV 

The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ Inter- 
preted BY Christian Experience - - _ . 120 

LECTURE V 

The Ideas of Holiness and Immortality Interpreted 

BY Christian Experience 162 

LECTURE VI 
Reasons for Regarding Christianity as the Absolute 

Religion 208 

Supplementary Note - - 248 

By the Reverend John H. DeForest, D.D., of Japan 



THE BAREOWS LECTUEESHIP FOUNDATION 

The Barrows Lectureship was established in 1894 by 
Mrs. Caroline E. Haskell. The first course of lectures 
was delivered during the winter of 1896-1897 by Dr. 
John Henry Barrows, in whose honor the lectureship was 
named. Dr. Barrows gave one or more lectures in each 
of the following cities: Calcutta, Lucknow, Cawnpore, 
Delhi, Lahore, Amritsar, Agra, Jeypore, Ajmere, Indore, 
Ahmednagar, Poona, Bangalore, Vellore, Madras, Madura, 
Palamcotta, Tinnevelly, and Colombo. This course of 
lectures has been published under the title, Christianity, 
the World Beligion. The second course of Barrows 
Lectures was delivered in Calcutta and elsewhere in 
India, by Dr. A. M. Fairbairn, Principal of Mansfield 
College, Oxford, during the winter of 1898-1899. This 
course of lectures has not been published. 

The letter of Mrs. Haskell to President Harper, in 
which she proposes to establish this lectureship in the 
University of Chicago, is as follows : 

Chicago, October 12, 1894. 

President William R. Harper: 

My dear Sir : I take pleasure in offering to the University 
of Chicago the sum of twenty thousand dollars for the found- 
ing of a second Lectureship on the Relations of Christianity 
and the Other Religions. These lectures, six or more in num- 
ber, are to be given in Calcutta (India), and, if deemed best, 
in Bombay, Madras, or some other of the chief cities of 
Hindustan, where large numbers of the educated Hindus are 
familiar with the English language. The wish, so earnestly 



X The Barrows Lectureship Foundation 

expressed by Mr. P. C. Mozoomdar, that a lectureship, like 
that which I had the privilege of founding last summer, might 
be provided for India, has led me to consider the desirability 
of establishing in some great collegiate center, like Calcutta, 
a course of lectures to be given, either annually or, as may 
seem better, biennially, by leading Christian scholars of 
Europe, Asia, and America, in which, in a friendly, tem- 
perate, conciliatory way, and in the fraternal spirit which 
pervaded the Parliament of Religions, the great questions 
of the truths of Christianity, its harmonies with the truths 
of other religions, its rightful claims and the best methods of 
setting them forth, should be presented to the scholarly and 
thoughtful people of India. 

It is my purpose to identify this work, which, I believe, 
will be a work of enlightenment and fraternity, with the Uni- 
versity Extension Department of the University of Chicago, 
and it is my desire that the management of this Lectureship 
should lie with yourself, as President of all the Departments 
of the University ; with Rev. John Henry Barrows, D.D., the 
Professorial Lecturer on Comparative Religion; with Pro- 
fessor George S. Goodspeed, the Associate Professor of Com- 
parative Religion ; and with those who shall be your and their 
successors in these positions. It is my request that this lecture- 
ship shall bear the name of John Henry Barrows, who has 
identified himself with the work of promoting friendly rela- 
tions between Christian America and the people of India. 
The committee having the management of these lectures shall 
also have the authority to determine whether any of the 
courses shall be given in Asiatic or other cities outside of 
India. 

In reading the proceedings of the Parliament of Religions, 
I have been struck with the many points of harmony between 
the different faiths, and by the possibility of so presenting 
Christianity to others as to win their favorable interest in its 
truths. If the committee shall decide to utilize this Lecture- 
ship still further in calling forth the views of scholarly repre- 
sentatives of non-Christian faiths, I authorize and shall 
approve such a decision Only good will grow out of such a 
comparison of views 



The Barrows Lectureship Foundation xi 

It is my wish that, accepting the offer I now make, the com- 
mittee of the University will correspond with the leaders of 
religious thought in India, and secure from, them such helpful 
suggestions as they may readily give. I cherish the expecta- 
tion that the Barrows Lectures will prove, in the years that 
shall come, a new golden bond between the East and West. 
In the belief that this foundation will be blessed by our 
heavenly Father to the extension of the benign influence of 
our great University, to the promotion of the highest interests 
of humanity, and to the enlargement of the Kingdom of Truth 
and Love on earth, I remain, with much regard. 

Yours sincerely, 

Caroline E. Haskell. 

In conformity with this letter of gift, the following 
principles and regulations governing the Barrows Lecture- 
ship have been established : 

1. A Committee, consisting of the President of the Univer- 
sity of Chicago and the Professor of Comparative Religion, is 
intrusted with the management of the Lectureship. 

2. Nominations to the Lectureship are made by the Com- 
mittee and confirmed by the Board of Trustees of the Uni- 
versity. 

3. The Lecturer holds office for two years, during which 
period he is expected to deliver the series of lectures in a place 
or places agreed upon between himself and the Committee. 

4. During his term of office, or in the year following its 
expiration, the Lecturer is expected to publish his lectures, at 
The University of Chicago Press, in the series known as " The 
Barrows Lectures," and to deposit two copies of the same with 
the Librarian of the University of Chicago, one of which is to 
be placed in the General Library of the University, the other in 
the Departmental Library of Comparative Religion. 

5. The Committee is empowered to add to these regulations 
any others which shall be in harmony with the terms or spirit 
of the Letter of Gift. 



PKEFACE 

It is with hesitation that I submit to Western readers 
the simple record of this attempt to preach Christ in the 
East. The publication of these Lectures has been long 
delayed by reason of circumstances beyond my control. 

The task of a Barrows Lecturer in the Orient is deli- 
cate and difficult. He goes as a representative of Western 
University life to confer with his equals, the educated men 
of the Eastern hemisphere, upon matters of seriousness and 
weight. Thorough philosophical training, combined with 
-extensive knowledge of Eastern history and institutions, 
is a desirable qualification for this work. I did not have 
this qualification. The appointment came to me un- 
sought. It was accepted under a sense of duty, and was 
fulfilled under a consciousness of many limitations. 

As a part of my obligation to the University of Chicago, 
the Lectures now are published; without apology, but 
also without pretence of learning. I hope that those, in 
America and Great Britain, who shall read these Lectures, 
may believe with what unaffected diffidence they are now 
made public. 

They appear, in this authorised edition, precisely in 
the form in which they were delivered in India. No 
attempt has been made to extend or to alter them, nor 
to record the alterations made in their delivery in Japan. 
Those alterations appear in the Tokyo editions, which are 
in English and in Japanese. The recapitulations, at cer- 
tain points, of foregoing arguments have not been omitted. 
The forms of local delivery have been retained; my desire 
being to set before Western readers, as exactly as possible, 



xiv Barrows Lectures 

the manner and style of the work done in India, for In- 
dians. The Syllabus, which was found helpful in India, 
has been reproduced from the original sheets printed in 
the Madras edition. 

The Lectures were given in full in the five University 
Cities of India: Calcutta, Allahabad, Lahore, Bombay, 
Madras; and, in Japan, at Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo, 
and Sendai. Parts of the course were given in the Indian 
cities, Benares, Delhi, Poona, Vellore, and Madura; also 
in Colombo and Kandy, Ceylon; and in Okayama, Japan. 
They were heard principally by Indian and Japanese 
graduates and undergraduates. In India and Ceylon the 
services of an interpreter were not needed, by reason of the 
prevalent use of English in University circles. In Japan I 
enjoyed the privilege of having for my constant companion 
and gifted interpreter, the Reverend Masumi Hino, M.A., 
B.D., Professor of Philosophy in the Doshisha, Kyoto, a 
graduate of the Union Theological Seminary. Professor 
Hino, assisted by the Eeverend Mr. Harada, of Kobe, has 
translated the Lectures into the Japanese language. 

I desire to express my sense of the courtesy of Oriental 
audiences, which, without exception, gave patient and 
sympathetic hearing to Lectures containing opinions 
favourable to a religion of which few of the auditors were 
adherents. It was never other than a pleasure to address 
these responsive assemblies, which, invariably, made me 
conscious of their welcome. Never did I feel the slightest 
sense of race alienation or intellectual remoteness. I felt 
myself to be among friends, who, trained under other 
traditions, and looking upon life from other points of 
view, were, nevertheless, truly my brothers, my fellow- 
seekers after God. I look back upon many occasions 
when, in the presence of a thousand Orientals, I felt the 



Preface xv 

same spiritual reciprocity that I have known under similar 
conditions in the presence of my own countrymen. 

Those who would enter into the spirit of these Lectures 
must, for the moment, dismiss their own well-grounded 
Christian belief, forget their own Christian experience, 
lay aside denominational interests, and discharge the 
mind of racial prejudice. They must let themselves be 
transported, in imagination, into the pantheistic atmos- 
phere of the East, where religion is the chief business of 
life, while the validity of personal religious experience is 
discarded, by many, as illusion. Assuming this mental 
attitude, they must consent to hear certain of the funda- 
mental ideas of the Christian religion discussed in other 
terms than those formed in the moulds of Western 
sectarian orthodoxy. They must, if but for the moment, 
admit that there is a Christian essence, which, like a dis- 
embodied spirit, may subsist without the corporeal vesture 
of theological definition sanctioned by Western usage. 
They must, in theory at least, grant the possibility of 
setting forth this Christian essence without involving the 
aid of Western ecclesiasticism. They must remember that 
the religion of Jesus Christ, and its Semitic antecedents 
and cognates, were primarily Oriental; and that modern 
Christianity in Europe and America represents enormous 
divergence from the primitive type, and enormous adapta- 
tion to historical and social conditions peculiar to the 
West. Toward these adaptations the East may, not with- 
out reason, decline to look favourably ; preferring, for her- 
self, the primitive type, with its accentuation of Oriental 
features. 

Approaching these Lectures in the spirit indicated, 
one will not be surprised to find them placing the accent 
of thought where one would not be likely to place it, if 



xvi Barrows Lectures 

addressing a Christian congregation in Europe or America. 
One remembers that many of the axioms of Western 
Christian beliefs cease to be axioms east of Aden. The 
Personality of God, the reality of the finite self, the 
validity of experience, the importance of the historical 
basis, are matters that we assume in London or New 
York. To assume them in Benares is fatuous. There, 
not only are the concrete religious interests unlike our 
own (as, for example, the sanctity of animals, the rein- 
carnation of souls, the adoration of Mother Ganga, the 
spiked charpoys of ascetics), but also the ultimate philo- 
sophical conceptions of the Universe and of the Absolute 
are unlike our own. 

He who, confident in his Western tradition, ignores 
the differentia of Eastern thinking, and preaches Chris- 
tian truth to the subtle students of Allahabad precisely in 
the terms to be employed at Oxford or at Harvard, while 
he may interest the few who have become Europeanised 
in their thinking, runs the risk of remaining unintelligible 
to the many whose intellectual presuppositions have almost 
nothing in common with his own. And if, insisting that 
the Christian essence can be clothed only in the vocabulary 
of his sectarian orthodoxy, he proceeds to attack the views 
of other Christians or to disparage the philosophy of his 
Indian auditors, he may learn by bitter experience that 
the pent-up scorn and hatred in the long-suffering heart 
of the East will, on sufficient provocation, discharge itself 
against the philosophical intolerance of a Western, even 
as against his racial haughtiness. 

Nothing could be more misleading than to assume that, 
because India has been forced by the fortunes of war to 
accept European government, and to assimilate European 
institutions, it is therefore more hospitable to the conven- 



Preface xvii 

tional thought-forms of Western Christendom, in matters 
of religion. On the contrary, there is reason to suppose that 
the hostility of educated Indians to Christianity springs 
not from hatred of Christ, whom many non-Christian In- 
dians love and honour, but rather from irritating associa- 
tion of the Christian religion with Western authority, 
through ecclesiastical, theological, and ceremonial chan- 
nels of influence. 

If Christianity be presented to the sensitive Indian 
mind as a product of Western life, the chances are many 
that the presentation shall be met with sullen aversion or 
scornful rejection by those who have the self-possession 
that is born of culture. But if, on the other hand, the 
Christian essence can be regarded as separable from its 
Western ecclesiastical adaptations, and can be presented 
as lending itself to the modes of Eastern thought, the 
bearer of that message shall not lack a welcome. 

It must also be borne in mind by those who read the 
following Lectures that the absence of accent upon the 
historical data of the Christian religion is an intentional 
omission . It corresponds with the relative indifference to 
the historical basis that appears in contemporary Indian 
religious thinking. Every religious question is of interest 
to an Indian, but he approaches all from the metaphysical 
rather than from the historical point of view. Funda- 
mental problems of historical criticism have absorbed the 
attention of the West. The East regards those problems 
with indifference or with impatience. The West has been 
much engaged in accentuating the historic Jesus and his 
teachings, as differentiated from Pauline metaphysic. One 
does not question the advantage of such discussion for 
Western minds built with special gifts of historical per- 
ception. But to the Oriental religious thinker, the sphere 



xviii Barrows Lectures 

of historical criticism is too local and too reduced in 
measure to meet universal conditions. The, keen accuracy 
of Occidental scholarship delights in the Synoptic Gos- 
pels, and seeks to confine the essence of Christianity within 
the lines of the narrative. The mind of the meditative 
East is interested, passively, in the historicity of Jesus, 
but, when attracted to Christianity, glows with religious 
passion before the Christ of the Fourth Gospel and the 
Christ of the Epistles. The Oriental thinking that suf- 
fuses the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles is suited to 
Eastern minds, and that interpretation of Christianity 
shall best command the attention of the East that best 
conserves and most richly exhibits the high metaphysical 
and mystical values of the Bible. 

At the present stage in the Christianisation of the 
East one may perhaps venture the statement that the most 
urgent and vital things to be done are these : to give moral 
content to the Idea of God; to differentiate the Incarna- 
tion of the Son of God from the incarnations of Hinduism ; 
to ethicise religion in the thought and practice of the 
individual. Each one of these ends calls for the most 
careful preparation of mind and spirit on the part of 
those who undertake the solemn task of discussing before 
Indian or Japanese audiences of culture the major proposi- 
tions of the Christian faith. The preparation of mind 
should involve the largest attainable knowledge of the 
metaphysic of pantheism and of the connotations of human 
personality, under a pantheistic system of thinking. With 
this should be joined the clearest possible view of whatso- 
ever is universal and permanent in the field of Christian 
thought as distinguished from whatsoever is local, secta- 
rian, and transitional. The pathway to such a point of 
view must advance through and beyond the Synoptics to 



Preface xix 

the uttermost height of the Apostolic Christology. For 
one of Western birth, who attempts in the sensitised atmos- 
phere of modern India to give moral content to the Idea 
of God, to differentiate the Incarnation of the Son of God 
from the incarnations of Hinduism and to ethicise religion 
in the thought and practice of the individual, there must 
be a preparation of spirit as well as a preparation of mind. 
Intellectual research is not enough. There must be born 
within one a chastened and humble temper, a heart of 
love. The pride of Anglo-Saxon birth must be subdued ; 
the fierce intolerance toward the halting, irresolute, dream- 
ing East must be rebuked and overthrown by Christlike 
love. Reverence must supplant contempt, and the honour 
of brotherhood the pious disdain that stoops to save what 
it cannot respect. Until this temper prevails, religious 
teachers cannot win toward evangelical Christianity the 
respectful consideration of many educated Indians. 

Within the last few years, owing to the rapid march of 
events and the rapid change of international conditions, 
interest in Oriental affairs and in Oriental ideas has been 
quickened in all circles of culture throughout the Western 
world. The increased interest proceeds not merely from 
that curiosity which promotes travel and discovery, and 
not merely from that growing attention to world-affairs 
which is a feature of modern intellectuality. In addition 
to these sources of interest, there is an advancing appre- 
ciation of the East in many quarters. An opinion steadily 
gains ground that the East is the home of ideas and forces 
which are to have a significant bearing on the future 
civilisation of the world; that the East has some function 
to discharge toward the West, or some message to give 
to the West, as yet but dimly perceived by itself and by 
the rest of world. It is felt, with something like a sense 



XX Barrows Lectures 

of destiny, that the age is dawning in which that function, 
whatever it be, is to be administered ; that message, what- 
it be, delivered. 

By some, who view the East with suspicion and race 
antipathy, that vague sense of a future influence to be 
exerted by East on West is called the "Yellow Peril." 
By those who have come sufficiently near to the Eastern 
mind to discern its point of view, and to be taken, meas- 
urably, into its confidence, this so-called Peril exists only 
in theory ; and the future message of the mysterious East 
to the strenuous and practical West appears rather to be 
a metaphysical and religious message, to be delivered, not 
with the rude force of armed intrusion, but with the mag- 
netic subtlety of silent influence, addressing the innermost 
soul of the West. In any case, the presence of this con- 
viction that the East is a growing force in world-politics, 
and that the East is to be heard from in ways undreamed 
of by our forefathers, suggests that the present and future 
attitude of the Orient toward the Christian religion and 
the Christian ethics is a matter of high importance. By 
this attitude must be determined the nature of the influ- 
ence that, apparently, is about to emerge from the East 
and to liberate itself upon the world. 

In conclusion, I desire to thank the University of 
Chicago for many courtesies and much patience toward 
myself in connection with this attempt to fulfill the re- 
quirements of the Barrows Lectureship. I wish also to 
thank the authorities of the University Press for permis- 
sion to employ orthographical forms according to English 
usage. 



Charles Cuthbert Hall. 



Union Theological Seminary, 
June, A. D. 1905. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The rapid growth in America of an interest in Oriental 
studies is a feature of the intellectual history of our time. 
This development has not been the result of any direct 
political contact with the East ; it has owed more to its 
association with the modern study of Comparative Reli- 
gion to which America has, from the first, accorded an 
enthusiastic welcome. In the University of Chicago this 
science has secured prominent recognition, and the foun- 
dation by Mrs. Haskell of the Barrows Lectureship with 
special reference to India has emphasised the spirit and 
aim with which these studies are being cultivated. 

Of this aim, both on its intellectual and spiritual side, 
no better illustration can be found than in this volume, 
which contains the Lectures delivered in the cold season 
1902-1903 in the leading cities of India by Dr. Charles 
Cuthbert Hall, President of the Union Theological Semi- 
nary of New York, the third in the succession of Barrows 
Lecturers on this unique foundation. 

It is not difficult to understand how the mental atti- 
tude and the religious outlook presented in these lectures 
have found so congenial a soil in the minds of American 
religious thinkers. The process going on around them, 
by which a great national life is being evolved through 
the confluence of so many streams of independent national 
history, is full of suggestions of that larger process which 
has been going on throughout the ages in the wider field 
of the religious history of mankind. This wide outlook 
is naturally forced on the thinker placed amid such sur- 
roundings ; and it is perhaps easier for him than for those 



XX Barrows Lectures 

of destiny, that the age is dawning in which that function, 
whatever it be, is to be administered ; that message, what- 
it be, delivered. 

By some, who view the East with suspicion and race 
antipathy, that vague sense of a future influence to be 
exerted by East on West is called the "Yellow Peril." 
By those who have come sufficiently near to the Eastern 
mind to discern its point of view, and to be taken, meas- 
urably, into its confidence, this so-called Peril exists only 
in theory ; and the future message of the mysterious East 
to the strenuous and practical West appears rather to be 
a metaphysical and religious message, to be delivered, not 
with the rude force of armed intrusion, but with the mag- 
netic subtlety of silent influence, addressing the innermost 
soul of the West. In any case, the presence of this con- 
viction that the East is a growing force in world-politics, 
and that the East is to be heard from in ways undreamed 
of by our forefathers, suggests that the present and future 
attitude of the Orient toward the Christian religion and 
the Christian ethics is a matter of high importance. By 
this attitude must be determined the nature of the influ- 
ence that, apparently, is about to emerge from the East 
and to liberate itself upon the world. 

In conclusion, I desire to thank the University of 
Chicago for many courtesies and much patience toward 
myself in connection with this attempt to fulfill the re- 
quirements of the Barrows Lectureship. I wish also to 
thank the authorities of the University Press for permis- 
sion to employ orthographical forms according to English 
usage. 

Charles Cuthbert Hall. 

Union Theological Seminary, 
June, A. D. 1905. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The rapid growth in America of an interest in Oriental 
studies is a feature of the intellectual history of our time. 
This development has not been the result of any direct 
political contact with the East; it has owed more to its 
association with the modern study of Comparative Reli- 
gion to which America has, from the first, accorded an 
enthusiastic welcome. In the University of Chicago this 
science has secured prominent recognition, and the foun- 
dation by Mrs. Haskell of the Barrows Lectureship with 
special reference to India has emphasised the spirit and 
aim with which these studies are being cultivated. 

Of this aim, both on its intellectual and spiritual side, 
no better illustration can be found than in this volume, 
which contains the Lectures delivered in the cold season 
1902-1903 in the leading cities of India by Dr. Charles 
Cuthbert Hall, President of the Union Theological Semi- 
nary of New York, the third in the succession of Barrows 
Lecturers on this unique foundation. 

It is not difficult to understand how the mental atti- 
tude and the religious outlook presented in these lectures 
have found so congenial a soil in the minds of American 
religious thinkers. The process going on around them, 
by which a great national life is being evolved through 
the confluence of so many streams of independent national 
history, is full of suggestions of that larger process which 
has been going on throughout the ages in the wider field 
of the religious history of mankind. This wide outlook 
is naturally forced on the thinker placed amid such sur- 
roundings ; and it is perhaps easier for him than for those 



xxii Barrows Lectures 

who are inclosed within more fixed and more unchange- 
able national boundaries to conceive the larger movement. 
To understand it aright it is necessary to view the various 
religious developments in their purely ideal aspects ; and 
the religious and intellectual detachment which such a 
view demands comes more easily to those who contem- 
plate these movements from a distance than to those 
whose contact with their actual present result tends to 
obscure their perception of the ideal elements which lie 
behind them. However this may be, the reader of these 
Lectures must be struck by their philosophic grasp and 
breadth of conception, quite as much as by the eloquent 
expression which they furnish of the author's sympathy 
with the religious strivings of all who in every age have 
been seekers after God. 

Many, I think, will admit that the attitude toward the 
ethnic religions maintained throughout these Lectures, 
which regards them as lying not outside but within the 
economy of the Divine purpose, is truer to our highest 
conception of God and to the teaching of the Christian 
revelation than the view which it has so largely displaced. 
Some of the early Christian apologists occupied substan- 
tially the same ground when they attributed to the direct 
agency of the Spirit of God the high aspirations and reli- 
gious endeavours of select spirits in the ancient world, and 
our Lord Himself has said of the doers of the truth that 
they "come to the light that their deeds may be made 
manifest that they are wrought in God." Dr. Hall not 
only accepts this position in regard to the workings of 
the religious consciousness of India; he has interwoven 
this thought into the entire fabric of his argument, and 
has employed it as his main chance for approach to the 
minds of his Indian hearers and readers. 



Introductory Note xxiii 

By the frankness and sincerity with which this point 
of view was adhered to throughout, these addresses were 
eminently fitted to win a sympathetic hearing from the 
Indian audiences to which they were delivered ; and those 
who are cognizant of the impression produced in the 
various centres where educated Indians gathered to hear 
them can bear testimony to the appreciative response 
which they awakened. It would, indeed, be difficult to 
find a better example of a Christian approach to the non- 
Christian mind than that which meets us in this series of 
Lectures. Appearing now in printed form, they lack that 
subtile quality which as spoken they derived from the 
magnetic personality of the lecturer; the eloquence of 
the living voice, too, is wanting; but the spirit remains, 
and will continue to win for them an increasing apprecia- 
tion both in the East and in the West. India is a land 
which craves for sympathy; it is quick to detect the 
accents of true Christian love, and SQch love never fails 
of its response. 

It did not fall within the scope of these Lectures to 
discuss the present religious conditions in India. If such 
discussion had been in place. Dr. Hall would, doubtless, 
have made it clear that it is possible to do justice to the 
highest and the best in Indian thought without shutting 
one's eyes to the sadness of its failures. Of this spiritual 
failure and degeneracy the best Indian minds are pro- 
foundly conscious; thoughtful spiritual men recognise 
and bewail it. But the lecturer had to deal with the 
ideal side only, his special aim being to exhibit Christ as 
the Fulfiller and His religion as the realisation of that 
ideal toward which humanity has been feeling its uncer- 
tain way through all the ages. He estimates at their 
highest these aspirations and achievements of the human 



xxiv Barrows Lectures 

spirit; but lie leaves the reader in no doubt as to their 
incompleteness and one-sidedness. The secret of their 
inadequacy to explain God and man, and to lead man up 
to his truer life in God, is expounded with philosophic 
thoroughness, and yet with all tenderness; while the ade- 
quacy and completeness of the revelation of God in Christ 
are set forth and illustrated in the light that comes from 
man's religious experience. 

To the Christian reader the apologetic value of such a 
method must be obvious, while the spirit in which the 
method is followed out ought to disarm prejudice and win 
for the argument here presented the candid consideration 
of those to whom it is specially addressed. The result is 
all the more likely to be secured in this case, in which the 
argument is transferred from the region of mere intel- 
lectual discussion to that of spiritual experience. We 
know how possible it is, when religions are compared and 
discussed from a purely intellectual standpoint, to arouse 
antagonisms which entirely defeat the highest ends of 
religious thought ; but religious experience rests on the 
ultimate, the deepest foundations of human life; it touches 
that which is most universal in man; and religious dis- 
cussion within this hallowed region ought not to alienate, 
but to invite. It is along such lines that the thought of 
these Lectures moves, and to this they owe much of their 
attractiveness as well as their special religious value. An 
argument thus overshadowed by the eternities has no 
place in it for acrimonious controversy; it abides in the 
inner sanctuary from which the clamour of rivalry, con- 
flict, and triumph is rigidly excluded. Here the lecturer 
has shown his peculiar strength ; and we may cherish the 
expectation that this distinctive note of his teaching will 
preserve for India the memory of his visit. 



Introductory Note xxv 

Those whom long residence in India has made familiar 
with the peculiar religious attitude of the Indian mind 
cannot fail to be struck by the exactness with which Dr. 
Hall has comprehended the situation. It is evident from 
these Lectures that, although Dr. Hall's first actual con- 
tact with the people of India dates from the time of this 
visit, his mental contact with them is of much older stand- 
ing, and that the positions he has advanced are the fruit, 
not only of a careful study of the ancient things of India, 
but of a very extensive knowledge of the present move- 
ments of Indian religious thought. 

At different points the Lectures suggest views of the 
Christian religion that are of the highest importance to 
its followers. To one of these I would direct attention 
in closing this brief introduction. The thought that the 
Christian religion cannot find its full expression until all 
nations have entered into its life is not new; but it has 
found in these Lectures clear and characteristic utterance. 

The general theme, as well as the surroundings amid 
which it was discussed, was well fitted to suggest such 
thoughts regarding the future possibilities of the Chris- 
tian faith. The fact that the higher thought of India 
has ever been centred in religion, that through the centu- 
ries it has wrestled with religion's ultimate problems, that 
more keenly than most other lands it has felt the burden 
of this unintelligible world, may well awaken the expecta- 
tion that the religion of Christ may yet receive a more 
emphatic interpretation on some of its many sides when 
the heart of India has laid hold of its life and doctrine. 
The church's slowness to obey her Master's great commis- 
sion has long delayed the full realisation of her own des- 
tiny. A conception of the Kingdom of God which implies 
that each nation or section of the world has its own con- 



xxvi Barrows Lectures 

tribution to bring to the religious interpretation of the 
common catholic faith is in accordance with the surest 
teachings of the history of the past, and needs to be 
emphasised both in the interests of the church and of the 
world which it is commissioned to evangelise. To the 
thoughtful Christian it supplies the stimulus of an in- 
spiring vision, and to the non-Christian world it presents 
the Christian religion as standing in a new and nearer 
relation to itself. "As the lightning cometh out of the 
east and shineth even unto the west, so shall the coming 
of the Son of man be." Such has ever been the coming 
of the Son of man in the actual history of the world. As 
the lightning coming out of the heavens seems to oblit- 
erate by its flash of sudden glory all our earthly directions 
and distances, and unites our eastern and our western 
horizons by its mystic chain of living light, so the divinely 
manifested Christ shines forth upon the world as the Lord 
from heaven, obliterating all mental distances and na- 
tional diversities, uniting the East and the West, and 
binding together in the bonds of one Divine universal love 
the sundered nations of men. 

D. Maokiohan, 
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay, 
Bombay, June 20, 1903. 



SYLLABUS 



LECTURE I 

THE NATURE OF EELIGION 

1. Joy of the lecturer on reaching India, for whose people he 
has had a lifelong affection. He comes as the ambassador 
of the University of Chicago in the United States of America. 
Intellectual and religious earnestness of Indians realised in 
university circles in America. 

2. Statement of general subject: Christian belief interpreted 
by Christian experience. Proposal to enter upon a study of 
the Christian religion in the modern spirit and from the 
modern point of view. Modern study of religion has 
acquired new form and content. The new science of religion 
has superseded disregard of the beliefs of others. Interest 
of western scholars in eastern religions. 

3. This interest arises from three causes: modern views of the 
unity of mankind, of the co-operative evolution of the race, 
and of the origin of religion. Discussion of these causes: 

a) Unity of the race not superficial and apparent, but pro- 
found and esoteric. To admit this does not subvert natu- 
ral distinctions and commit one to radical democracy. 
It enlarges the religious problem. 

b) Condition of the human race not fixed, but advancing as 
toward a goal. Every form of faith, therefore, acquires 
an evolutionary significance as a contribution toward the 
progress of mankind. 

c) Many of the noblest minds of our time, gaining new 
views of the origin of religion, can be satisfied no longer 
with past theories of priestly intervention as the cause 
of religion, or of one primitive revelation. The modern 
search for the origin of religion has considered animism, 
or the worship of spirits, reverence for the departed, as 
leading to the worship of ancestors, and the sense of per- 

xxvii 



xxviii Barrows Lectures 

sonal insignificance in the presence of incalculable powers 
of nature. Belief of the lecturer that the origin of reli- 
gion may be best learned from the study of its highest 
forms, and that these point to a yearning for the Infinite 
which is common among men. 

4. This view of the origin of religion leads to the question: 
Whence this yearning for God? The answer is given that it 
proceeds from the Spirit of God within ourselves. This 
opinion adds reverence and tenderness to the study of every 
form of faith. 

5. It is recognised that weighty arguments appear to justify 
indifference on the part of educated Hindus toward a 
thoughtful examination of the Christian religion. Statement 
of the argument from superior antiquity. Statement of the 
argument from lack of correspondence between East and 
West. Statement of the argument from supposed philo- 
sophical incompatibility. The force of these arguments 
being recognised, the broad discussion of the subject yet 
may be possible, inasmuch as the lecturer comes, not as an 
European, but as an American; not as a churchman, but as a 
university man; not as a controversialist, but in the spirit of 
gentleness and fellowship. Ambition of the lecturer to lift 
the discussion into the calm atmosphere of fraternal com- 
parison of views. 

6. To this end three undertakings are desirable on the part of 
eastern students who consent to examine the Christian reli- 
gion on its merits — an intellectual elimination, an historical 
retrospect, a philosophical adjustment. Discussion of these 
undertakings. 

a) The intellectual elimination is the dismissal, as irrelevant, 
of certain considerations that tend to enter into the 
Oriental study of the Christian religion and to vitiate the 
conclusions of the student. These considerations are 
political — the entanglement of Christianity with civil and 
military powers of government; ecclesiastical — the entan- 
glement of Christianity with the sectarian disputes of 
Christians; ethical — the entanglement of Christianity 
with the moral unworthiness of many of its nominal rep- 
resentatives. He who would explore the content of the 



Syllabus xxix 

Christian religion must withdraw his mind from consid- 
ering these local representations of its pure and profound 
essence. Christianity not a product of the West. Christ 
towers above European civilisation and is independent 
of it. 

b) The historical retrospect deals with the evolution of the 
Christian religion as it relates itself to the genealogy of 
races. Two race-names mysteriously involved — Aryan 
and Semite. The Aryan the common ancestor of Indian 
and European. This suggestion of kinship welcomed by 
the lecturer. Discussion of various theories of the cradle 
of our common ancestry. Upon any theory of race- 
origins the Christian religion derived neither from the 
Aryan of the East nor from the Aryan of the West. 
Emergence of Judaism from the earlier Semitic civilisa- 
tion. Uniqueness of Judaism — " a destroyed nation, but 
an indestructible people." Extraordinary supremacy of 
Judaism in religious faculty and in the power exercised 
through religion upon mankind. A consideration of this 
fact dispels the irritating suggestion that the Christian 
religion is a product of the West. Asia, not Europe, the 
cradle of Christianity. 

c) The philosophical adjustment recommended is not the 
surrender of intellectual inheritance, but the broad- 
minded effort to understand the intellectual positions of 
others. "Put yourself in his place." Such philosophical 
adjustment not hasty self-commitment to new opinions, 
but a judicial, deliberative, open-minded attitude, willing 
to inspect the foundations of another's thought. Such 
an attitude worthy of those who believe the unity of the 
race of mankind. Beneath all differentiations the fact 
remains that we are men. As such we can afford to 
open our hearts to one another and to seek to understand 
one another This spirit strongly recommended as suit- 
able in the present series of lectures. 



XXX Barrows Lectures 



LECTURE II 

THE CHKISTIAN IDEA OF GOD AND ITS RELATION TO 
EXPERIENCE 

1. Brief restatement of the mental attitude desirable for the 
study of the Christian religion by educated Orientals — intel- 
lectual elimination, historical retrospect, philosophical adjust- 
ment. 

2. Idea of God considered as the goal of knowledge. Extreme 
empiricism limits knowledge to the world of phenomena and 
supplies no basis for a philosophical conception of God. 
Fundamental postulate of the Christian religion the exist- 
ence of a God who can be known. Its chief end the knowl- 
edge of God. 

3. Apparent correspondence of this statement with the Hindu 
religious aspiration, "He who knows Brahma attains the 
highest." This common belief in the knowableness of the 
Infinite makes possible a calm examination of Christian con- 
ceptions, even though the conclusions reached are far removed 
from those of Hinduism. 

4. Essential nature of Christian theism cannot be understood 
until the two ideas, "God" and "human personality," are 
defined in the terms of Christian belief. Consideration of 
methods of interpreting the idea of God. 

a) The deistic or transcendent method intensifies the dis- 
tinction between God and the world : God being an objec- 
tive person transcending and living apart from His world, 
and interested as a king-emperor is interested in his sub- 
jects. The immemorial tradition of royalty encourages 
this conception of God. Its effects variable, including 
fatalism and self-torturing renunciation of a world con- 
ceived as without God. Christian theism unable to enter- 
tain this view of God because of its dualistic conclusion, 
which involves the practical contradiction of asserting 
Infinity while maintaining a finite reality which it 
describes as not -God, an existence altogether separate 
from God. The phraseology of Scripture, intent on 
developing the monotheistic conception, constantly refers 



Syllabus xxxi 

to God in the terms of transcendence, thereby retaining 
an element of truth that must be preserved for the deep- 
ening of reverence. Yet the interpretation of that truth 
in terms that would set off the world from God as a 
region apart from His infinity is as repugnant to the 
Christian as to the pantheist. 
b) The method of negation leads to the concept of an unde- 
finable Absolute without attributes or qualities; the 
unqualified resultant remaining after all that it is not has 
been eliminated. Attractiveness of this philosophy of the 
Infinite for many pure and profound natures of East and 
West. A way of escape from the confusion and weariness 
of existence. The principle of illusion considered. Cor- 
respondence of pantheism with a deep element in the life 
of humanity; viz., to find relief from the weariness of life 
by undermining the reality of the finite. The pantheism 
of Spinoza. Pantheism a protest against petty concep- 
tions of the Infinite. The Supreme Self the only reality. 
The subdivisions of the phenomenal world regarded by 
the purest pantheism as limitations imposed upon the 
absoluteness of the Supreme Self. Kelief from this con- 
clusion found in the negation of finitude as illusory. 
Christian recognition of this profound principle. 
5. The Christian religion differentiated from all pantheistic 
systems by its method of reaching a conception of the Infi- 
nite One and by its estimate of human personality. 

a) Philosophical distinction between the method of panthe- 
ism and the method of Christianity in arriving at the 
idea of God. Pantheism aspires toward the complete 
elimination of content, its ideal being simplicity of being. 
Christianity also advances by the path of negation toward 
the Supreme Self, but, having eliminated finitude and 
reached the concept of the Simple Absolute, it proceeds 
to fill that Simple Absolute with the attributes of Infinite 
Personality, an inexhaustible wealth of qualities and 
modes of being — the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. 

b) Philosophical distinction between the method of panthe- 
ism and the method of Christianity in the estimate of 
human personality. Monistic idealism of certain Oriental 



xxxii Barrows Lectures 

schools of thought. Unreality of personal distinctions 
and illusory nature of personal experience. 
Christian point of view: Individuality of God carries with 
it as a logical necessity the individuality of man. Self- 
completing of Divine Personality involves its expression in 
the terms of corresponding finite intelligences. Christian 
idea of the Trinity as the self -completing of Divine Person- 
ality through subjective differentiation. Finitude also neces- 
sary to complete Divine self-realisation. This necessitates 
the reality of human personality. Man a differentiated 
emanation from God. The psychological reality of the human 
individual the source of moral independence and the ground 
of moral responsibility. 

6. Purpose of foregoing affirmation to establish a basis on which 
to estimate the religious value of the distinctive beliefs of 
Christianity. " Value," objective and absolute, or subjective 
and relative. The term here is used in the latter sense: the 
religious value of Christian truth in the experience of the 
individual. 

"Experience" defined. Objection considered that experi- 
ence is illusory. Reality of a self in man cannot be denied. 
Experience the totality of what the individual self in man 
thinks, does, and suffers. Religious experi ence the totality 
of effects realised in the self -consciousness of the believer in 
a religion. Distinctive nature of Christian experience. Pur- 
pose of lecture to examine into the power of Christian ideas 
to add to the joy, power, and efficiency of the present life. 

7. The Christian religion rests its appeal to the individual life 
upon its belief in God and its belief in man. Christian idea 
of God assimilates elements of various philosophical systems 
— transcendence, immanence, monism. Relation of this com- 
plex idea to personal experience founded upon the Christian 
conception of man as a self-conscious, free, responsible being. 

Ethical monism differs from Christian experience in the 
nature of its incentive, in the nature of its obligation, in the 
nature of its satisfaction. Discussion of these particulars. 

8. Elements in the content of the Christian idea of God. The 
path of negation leads up to the path of affirmation, dis- 
closing content of great richness. Four elements suggested 



Syllabus xxxiii 

for consideration: timelessness, presence, character, manifes- 
tation. 

9. Timelessness of God. Perplexing nature of the time-relation 
in human experience. Method of pessimism, fatalism, the- 
osophy in dealing with time-relations. Christian religion 
takes refuge from the transitoriness of life and the illusory- 
nature of time-relations in the Divine independence of 
time-relations. " The eternal God is thy refuge." 

Time-relations considered as a mode of the Divine self- 
realisation. 

Value for Christian experience of the conception of the 
timelessness of God: a basis upon which to build our earthly 
life, an anchorage for thought, giving stability to purpose, 
dignity to character, hope for the world. 

The timelessness of God one of the perpetual inspirations 
of the Christian religion. 

10. Remaining elements reserved for next lecture. 



LECTURE III 

THE LORD JESUS CHRIST THE SUPREME MANIFESTATION 

OF GOD 

1. Mere independence of time-relations not in itself a quality 
having religious value. Hence, timelessness of God to be 
considered in connection with other aspects of His being. 
The conception of the presence of God in His world and in 
every creature expressed in Scripture and in later philo- 
sophical poetry. Christian view of the reality of the world a 
middle view between illusion and materialism. Reality of 
individualistic distinctions affirmed, but that reality not inde- 
pendent of the action of the mind in apprehending phenom- 
ena. The unity of life is the self-realisation of the Infinite 
Mind in and through all that is. The whole earth filled with 
God; yet this not pantheism, but the presence of self- 
conscious, self-determined Life. God's presence the basis of 
spiritual potency in human life. This fact lies at the basis 
of Christian thought. The presence of God is the consecra- 
tion of nature. The presence of God is deliverance from the 



xxxiv Bari'ows Lectures 

loneliness of finite personality. The presence of God gives 
rational continuity to individual life and to the life of the 
world. 

2. The presence of God to be viewed in connection with the 
character of God. The charm of Christianity centres in the 
character of God as realised in the Christian faith. " God is 
light," "God is love." Consideration of the light symbol. 
Recognition of its value for non-Christian faiths. Physical, 
intellectual, and ethical connotations of the idea of light. 
Each of these connotations considered in its relation to the 
Divine character. The glory, wisdom, and righteousness 
of God. Symbolic suggestion of self -manifestation. " God 
is love," the central truth of Christianity. Love a relation of 
subject and object. The Divine Essence contains within itself 
personal distinctions whereby love is realised. This love, 
entering time-relations, expresses attitude of God toward 
humanity. The heart of man slow to believe that God is 
love. Vastness of that thought. Tendency to regard God 
as unfriendly. This tendency augmented by the prevalence 
of evil. Christian religion founded upon the belief in ante- 
cedent love, which originates in the Divine Essence and is 
universal and personal. Significance of this belief as resist- 
ing pessimistic depression and as offering a channel for pent- 
up affections of the soul. 

3. The presence and character of God to be regarded in the 
light afforded by the manifestation of God. The self- 
revelation of Deity an idea not peculiar to the Christian 
religion. Vast range of this idea in the field of eastern 
thought. Self -revelation of Deity may be regarded as appar- 
ent rather than real, occurring as a concession to human 
limitations; or it may be regarded as the outcome of meta- 
physical relations inherent in the nature of God. Incarna- 
tions of Krishna. Polytheism. Christian belief in a self- 
revealing principle inherent in the nature of God as personal. 
Complete Divine self-realisation demands self-revelation to 
finite existences. The manifestation of God normal. 

4. This Divine self -manifestation enriches Christian experience, 
because a revelation of presence and of moral character. The 
manifestation of the presence of God is made (a) through 



Syllabus xxxv 

nature, (h) through history, (c) through the spiritual illumina- 
tion of man. Manifestation through nature realised through 
the principle of evolution. Influence of evolution upon modern 
religious thought. Manifestation through history contrasted 
with fatalism and pessimism. Philosophy of history. The 
purpose of the Eternal. The hopefulness of evolution in the 
realm of history. Manifestation through the spiritual illu- 
mination of man. The indwelling of God. The witness of 
the Spirit. This not pantheism; but the value of pantheism 
acknowledged. The indwelling presence viewed by Chris- 
tianity in connection with the separateness of personal indi- 
viduality. The channel of revelation. The Holy Scriptures 
of the Christian religion occurring in the evolutionary order 
of Divine self -disclosure. The relation of these Scriptures to 
the Jewish nation incidental. They are of universal signifi- 
cance, a common doorway to the clearest vision of a present 
God. 

5. The self -revelation of the character of God is made in the 
Person and the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Moral 
character manifested most conclusively in the terms of con- 
crete personality. The principle of life as the interpretation 
of character conditions the Incarnation of the Son of God. 
Incarnation of Jesus Christ not the birth of a hero, but the 
revelation of the character of the Eternal under the form of 
time and in the terms of human action. Kelation of this 
conception to the reality of the finite individual. Discrimi- 
nation between admiration for the moral beauty of the his- 
toric Christ and essential Christianity which regards the 
Incarnation of the Son of God as the incarnate manifestation 
of the eternal principle of Sonship that is in the Deity. This 
point of view assumed throughout the succeeding lectures. 
Discussion thus rendered unnecessary of antecedent proba- 
bility of revelation, relative merits of character as between 
Christ and non-Christian sages, and resemblance between 
certain Christian and pre-Christian traditions. 

6. Pre-Christian religions and the problem of existence. Their 
profound realisation of the sorrow and toil of life. Yearning 
to escape from finitude. Salvation considered as a deliver- 
ance from life. These conceptions contain the note of uni- 



xxxvi Barrows Lectures 

versality and point to the deep-seated human consciousness 
of lack of power to cope with the evil of life. The Incarna- 
tion of the Son of God considered in relation to this univer- 
sal yearning. Its message, the message, not of escape from 
life, but of the redemption of life from evil. " I am come 
that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abim- 
dantly." 



LECTURE IV 

THE SIN OF MAN AND THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST 

1. The Christian religion, in common with other religions, recog- 
nises the fact of sin and deals with it. Sin an observed fact. 
Interpretations of it may differ; the fact persists. Our con- 
ception of the nature of sin determined by our conception 
of the nature of God and of finite personality. 

2. Primary message of the Christian religion is deliverance 
from sin through a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. Ten- 
derness of Christ toward the sinful world and sinful persons. 
His Spirit reflected in true Christianity. Fundamental idea 
of God as Infinite Personality. Development of this idea 
leads to our conception of finite personality. Man the off- 
spring of God and a partaker of the Divine natiu-e. Phenome- 
non of sin thus invested with extraordinary significance. 
Consideration of the relation of sin to life in the philosophy of 
non-Christian religions. Special consideration of the doc- 
trine of Karma. 

3. Attitude of essential Christianity toward the problem of 
moral evil; does not regard moral evil as a metaphysical 
necessity, inherent in the nature of things. Nor is the seat 
of evil in the region of physical being. Essential Chris- 
tianity locates the seat of evil in the will of man. Inquiry 
into the nature of the himaan will. The freedom of the will. 
The self-assertion of the ego not sin. The morality of the 
will issues, not from the fact of volition, but from the ante- 
cedent fact of a divine order of being which is an absolute 
standard, and with which the human will is either in har- 
mony or in conflict. 



Syllabus xxxvii 

Analysis of the point of view from which Christianity regards 
the phenomenon of sin: 

a) An appreciation of the divine order of the universe as an 
expression of the love of God for man. 

b) An appreciation of the greatness of man as being capable 
of asserting himself against the divine order. 

c) An appreciation of the sorrowful and destructive results 
of this alienation of the finite ego from the benign and 
holy will of God. 

Distinctive contribution of the Christian religion to the reli- 
gious experience of the world touching the nature and effects 
of sin. Sin differentiated from outward and ceremonial un- 
cleanness and located in the very centre of selfhood. Essence 
of sin consists in the self-assertion of the finite will against 
the divine order of life. 
a) Sin in its relation to God — the denial of sovereignty, an 

offense against holy love. 
6) Sin in its relation to the sinner himself — a blow dealt 

against one's self. 
c) Sin in its relations to other individuals and to society — a 

plague spread by the one among the many. 
Further examination into the social significance of sin. 
Christ parallels love to God with love to our neighbor. Sin 
a social offense. Personal repentance does not undo the 
social consequences of sin. Study of the problem of life 
widespread as twentieth century opens. That study ancient 
in itself, but takes on new meaning in our time. It pos- 
sesses a new hopefulness, a recognition of the value of the 
present life and the possibility of making it worth living. 
This new note of hopefulness in the modern study of life 
attributed (a) to the progress of physical science in discover- 
ing better modes of living; (6) to the advance in social 
science toward an appreciation of the worth of life; (c) to the 
evident discrepancy between what life is and what it might 
be for the masses of men. 

The supreme question that confronts those in all lands who 
share this hope of reforming the condition of humanity is: 
where to obtain power competent to uplift the world and 
make it morally new. The sadness of the pre-Christian reli- 



xxxviii Barrows Lectures 

gions. Pessimistic view of life. The pessimistic philosophy 
imable to supply the moral dynamic for which the best 
thought of the present is seeking. Conviction of the lecturer 
that this dynamic is found alone in Jesus Christ and His 
holy sacrifice for men. This not discarding other religions 
which have accomplished other ends. It emphasises the 
distinctive function of Christianity, which is to uplift human 
lives by saving them from sin. This function attested by 
the Christian experience of innumerable and widely separated 
persons. 
8. The extent and positiveness of this testimony raises the 
question: Who, then, is Christ? His own answer given: "I 
am the Alpha and the Omega. " 
Examination of the work of Christ: 

a) Emerging in the fulness of time to co-ordinate and unify 
the religious life of the race. 

b) The self -revealing God. 

c) The sin-condemning Judge. 

d) The suffering Saviour. 



LECTURE V 



THE IDEAS OF HOLINESS AND IMMORTALITY INTERPBETED 
BY CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

1. Recapitulation of the foregoing argument concerning the 
nature of sin; the conscience of earnest men touching the 
social aspects of sin; the testimony of Christian experience as 
to the power of Christ to deliver from sin. Christ the self- 
revealing God; the sin-condemning Judge; the suffering 
Saviour. 

2. The risen Christ considered as the life-giving Spirit who is 
the type and standard of humanity. Conformity to Christ 
the solution, for the individual, of the ethical problem. The 
evolution of the concept "Holiness." Holiness in primitive 
rehgion non-ethical, implying the reservation of objects or 
persons for use in connection with religious rites. Ceremo- 
nial cleanness and uncleanness. Holiness considered as self- 
abstraction from an illusory world. The Christian conception 



Syllabus xxxix 

of holiness assimilates the ideas of dedication of places, or 
persons, or physical separation from defilement, and of self- 
abstraction from a transitory world. The essence of the 
Christian conception of holiness not external and ceremonial; 
but inward, ethical, spiritual. The will is the seat of holi- 
ness; the essence of holiness is normal relation to God. 
The Christian conception of holiness rational, noble, full of 
hope and outlook; an idea of power. Absolute moral beauty 
of God's character the deepest element in this conception. 
Philosophical conclusion verified in history and in experi- 
ence, through Jesus Christ. Ethical beauty of the character 
of Christ. Holiness of Christ not ceremonial. 

3. The moral reason of man ; its power to make rational appeals 
to conscience and will. Christianity exalts the dignity of 
man. Man of common essence with God. Differentiation 
of man from animals. Discussion of the doctrine of trans- 
migration, in its relation to animals. On abstaining from 
the flesh of animals. Correspondence of man with God 
interrupted by sin. Moral conflict of the inner life; a 
struggle realised by the noblest natures. Instinct of the 
soul in temptation to appeal to God. 

4. The indwelling of the Divine Spirit in the spirits of men. 
This indwelling not incompatible with full liberty of indi- 
viduality. The holy life stands for more than the elementary 
instincts of kindness or compassion. It stands for more 
than the unaided action of the moral reason. It implies a 
personal Power taking up its abode in the soul. The indwell- 
ing of the Comforter. 

5. This being the foundation on which the Christian conception 
of holiness rests, its characteristic notes of expression corre- 
spond therewith. Discussion of these. 

a) Attitude of the holy life toward sin involves the elements 
of appreciation, antagonism, sorrow. Appreciation of sin 
progressive in Christian experience. 

b) Attitude of the holy life toward self. The Yoga philoso- 
phy. Individuality. Consecration. Stewardship. 

c) Attitude of the holy life toward God. Desire; longing; 
love. Discussion of the nature of prayer. 

d) Attitude of the holy life toward society. Social attitude 



xl Barrows Lectures 

of Christianity contrasted with Hinduism and Buddhism. 
Reality of the individual. Goodness of existence. 
e) Attitude of the holy life toward a future state of being. 
Death. The philosophical significance of death can be 
stated only in the terms of life continuing beyond the 
grave. The Christian view of immortality, and its contri- 
bution to the worth of existence in this world. 



LECTURE VI 



REASONS FOR REGARDING CHRISTIANITY AS THE ABSOLUTE 

RELIGION 

1. Fairness and profitableness of broad discussion of this theme 
by educated men. India a suitable place for such discussion 
by reason of its pre-eminent interest in religious thought. 
Reasonableness of using the best and most available things 
in commerce, education, or religion, without regard to the 
fact that such things may be used also by those with whom, 
on other grounds, we are not in sympathy. 

2. Two forces in modern times have promoted the possibility of 
such discussion as the present ; viz., the growth of tolerance, 
and the advance in the study of comparative religion. 
Observations upon these. These forces interpreted by the 
lecturer as pointing to a larger synthesis in matters of reli- 
gion, in order to a broader and more rational fellowship 
among seekers after God. 

3. The first step toward that larger synthesis a definition of the 
term "absolute," as applied to religion. The term differen- 
tiated from the monarchical idea, and associated with what- 
ever implies the opposite of the terms "provisional," "local/* 
" temporary," and " approximate." 

4. The quality of universality found to be the most distinctive 
note of an absolute religion. Universality of a religion not 
determined by number of converts, but by intrinsic capacity 
to meet the needs of man. This test must be applied in the 
categories (a) of the conception of God ; (6) of time and 
place ; (c) of social ideal ; (d) of concurrence with reality. 

5. Can there be conceived the existence of an absolute religion 



Syllabus xli 

in the world as we know it ? This becomes conceivable for 
those who believe (a) the essential unity of the human race ; 
(6) the universality of religious sentiment ; (c) the practical 
advantages that would result from the development of such 
a religion. Consideration of these. 

6. Does any existing religion appear to combine the character- 
istics required for such immense service to humanity ? This 
determined by the question (a) of origin ; (b) of philosophical 
method ; (c) of moral initiative ; (d) of hopefulness. 

7. Examination of the Christian religion by these tests. The 
limitations and hindrances of Christianity admitted ; but its 
fitness to be regarded as the absolute religion maintained on 
the grounds (a) of suitability of origin ; (6) of breadth of 
philosophical method; (c) of strength of moral initiative; 
(d) of essential hopefulness. 

8. The relation of the East to this absolute religion. Conclu- 
sion of the lecturer : (a) that the allegiance of the East to 
Christianity would involve no compromise of the national 
spirit ; (b) that the East is needed, in order that full expres- 
sion may be given to the essential conceptions of the Chris- 
tian faith. 



FIRST LECTURE 

THE NATUEE OF RELIGION 

To be in India ; to observe its civilisation ; to commune 
with the leaders of its intellectual and religious life — this, 
tor me, is the fulfilment of a long-treasured hope. From 
the days of my boyhood my heart has turned toward 
India with tender and respectful affection. Subtle are 
the influences that play upon our lives, swaying our 
emotions, predetermining our choices. These words are 
written in the Christian Scriptures : " The wind bloweth 
where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." 
So are our lives beset from birth by viewless forces that 
quicken sentiment and nourish purpose, we know not 
how. With the persistence of the southwestern monsoon 
they breathe upon us from out of the ocean of an infinite 
past ; they impel us toward a coast that the mind explores 
long ere the eyes behold it. So was my life impelled 
toward India by an invisible breath of tendency, breathing 
upon my years from boyhood onward ; a persistent yet 
most gentle impulse that filled my heart with love toward 
brethren unseen, yet not unknown. Long before my eyes 
descried the headlands of your coast, long before I 
received the academic commission in obedience to which 
I have travelled hither, my heart prophesied of India, by 
the warmth of its longings, by the tenderness of its sym- 
pathies, by the sincerity of its admiration. 

But, great as is the joy of beholding the lives toward 
whom one has been impelled by these desires, the mere 
sense of personal satisfaction could not sustain me in the 

1 



2 Barrows Lectures 

purpose that brings me hither. That purpose is not the 
pleasurable diversion of the traveler, nor the idyllic 
reverie of the sentimentalist ; it is the intellectual and 
spiritual purpose of the seeker after truth, who, coming 
from the remote and youthful West, would commune with 
his brethren of the East concerning grave problems of 
the soul and of God. But it would be an act of presump- 
tion, were I, purely on personal grounds, to ask such 
communion with minds trained in the disciplines of 
ancient philosophies; or to attempt the utterance of my 
private convictions in the presence of students and apolo- 
gists of religions that were world-forces before northern 
Europe had emerged from barbarism, or America had 
been aroused from prehistoric solitude. Not with such 
rashness do I speak. It is my privilege to stand in your 
presence as an ambassador of a University which, in that 
distant West, the echoes of whose activities have reached 
your ears, maintains at its full value the appreciation of 
pure thought, especially of religious thought, as that 
function of personality by means of which chiefly the 
brotherhood of men is realised and promoted. Thoughts, 
not things, reveal the kinship of human spirits, and by 
the comparison of thoughts men see in one another the 
common life of God. To compare political institutions 
or social customs or physical productions may tend only 
to alienation, accentuating the remoteness of the oriental 
point of view from that determined by the more strenuous 
utilitarianism of the West. And that this tendency to 
alienation is probable along such lines of comparison may 
be inferred from the fact that local and occasional cir- 
cumstances, rather than universal forces, operate to fix 
the character of political institutions, social customs, and 
physical productions. 



The Nature of Religion 3 

But when the mind enters the sanctuary of pure 
thought, it breathes the atmosphere of universality. As 
the sandals of the worshipper are left without the door of 
the mosque of Islam, so he that aspires to meditate before 
the shrine of truth should leave behind him whatsoever is 
carnal and external, should enter with that only which is 
of the essence of personality. Within that sanctuary of 
pure thought geographical and racial boundaries exist 
not ; age-long barriers dissolve, and the vast brotherhood 
of souls is disclosed in the presence of fundamental 
problems of God and of life. 

We of the West have known you as, by inheritance 
and by temperament, the lovers of pure thought. The 
threshold of that sanctuary is worn with the entering of 
your reverent feet. The memorials of many generations 
attest your fidelity as seekers after truth. And we also 
of the West are lovers of thought and seekers after truth. 
Beneath the loud note of our urgent life of action is an 
undertone of spiritual seriousness. For many among us 
the supreme interest of existence lies within the sanctuary 
of pure thought, in the contemplation and comparison of 
ideas rather than in the acquisition of things. Pre- 
eminently sacred in our eyes are those spiritual concep- 
tions and beliefs which, assuming diverse forms in the 
several ethnic groups, are witnesses throughout the whole 
family of man to the fact of religion as a common 
possession of the world ; not the idiosyncrasy of a nation, 
but the inseparable attribute of human life. As the rep- 
resentative of such a circle do I come. In the youngest 
of the great universities of the world, the University of 
Chicago, founded at the territorial centre of the American 
continent, the love of thought and the quest of truth flourish 
in an atmosphere of cosmopolitan sympathy. There the 



4 Barrows Lectures 

one brotherhood of mankind is recognised, and the mani- 
fold hopes, strivings, joys, and sorrows of remote com- 
munities are honoured and, in a measure, comprehended. 
There, especially, the religious conceptions and convic- 
tions of distant nations are viewed with respect, and a 
serious effort is made to understand them, as historical 
expressions of one of the fundamental activities of the 
human mind. 

The Oriental lectureship, of which I have the honour to 
be the present incumbent, was instituted as an evidence 
of that interest in the religious life of man which charac- 
terises the University of Chicago. It is the belief of the 
University that a comparison of points of view in matters 
of religion is desirable ; and that effort, on the one hand 
to present, on the other to comprehend, the content of the 
leading ideas of any religion must be approved by candid 
minds, and may advance the cause of truth. In this spirit 
the University welcomes from time to time those who are 
competent to interpret the essential principles of Oriental 
faiths. To such she gives heed, desiring to comprehend 
the messages that they bring and to compare those mes- 
sages with the characteristic conceptions of Christianity. 
In the same spirit, she sends, from time to time, her 
representatives to the East, charging them faithfully to set 
forth the innermost essence of the religion of Jesus Christ, 
and bespeaking for them that patient and generous hear- 
ing which is one of the many beautiful traditions of Indian 
courtesy. It is felt that such interchange of view is rea- 
sonable and wholesome. It is a substitute for that 
ignorance concerning the sacred beliefs of our fellow-men 
which is the mother of injustice and error. It is a protest 
against that narrowness which is willing to receive the 
superficial or prejudiced statements of the uninstructed in 



The Nature of Beligion 5 

lieu of such as are uttered with the certitude and maturity 
of knowledge. It is, finally, an appeal to truth, which, to 
all who know its value, is the one thing to be sought at 
all hazards, to be obtained at all costs. Truth is the pearl 
of great price, to gain which a man well may part with 
all that he has. Truth is the ideal of the single-minded, 
to approach which brings a delight that rewards all 
renunciation, a hope that survives all disquietudes involved 
in the reconstruction of opinion, a peace of God which 
passeth all understanding. 

With this statement of my mission to India as a Uni- 
versity representative, and with these observations con- 
cerning our relation to one another as lovers of pure 
thought and fellow-seekers after truth, I advance to the 
body of my subject, which has been announced as a series 
of Lectures on Christian Belief Interpreted hy Christian 
Experience. I invite you to enter upon the study of a 
religion ; and to do this in the modern spirit and from the 
modern point of view. It has been said recently that, in 
one sense, "the study of religion is as old as human 
thought, but, in another and more pertinent sense, it is 
the youngest of the sciences. The moment that man in a 
self-conscious spirit ponders over the religious beliefs 
which he holds, or which have been handed down to him 
as a legacy, he is engaged in the study of religion; and 
we know that such a moment comes at an early stage in 
the development of human culture, if not to the masses, at 
all events to certain individuals."^ 

In approaching India I am impressed with the fact 
that the educated classes pre-eminently are students of 
religion, learned in their faiths, and, where agnosticism 
has not superseded belief, jealous of their traditions. 

1 Jastkow, The Study of Religion, pp. 1, 2. 



6 Barrows Lectures 

Intelligent communities, from the earliest times, have 
engaged in the study and maintenance of their respective 
faiths. Such study of religion marks the history of Hin- 
duism and of Mohammedanism, even as it was conspicuous 
among the learned Jews of the time of Christ. Histori- 
cally, this study and maintenance of one's own faith fre- 
quently has been attended with indifference and disdain 
toward the beliefs of others, or with attempts to restrain 
or to extirpate those beliefs by violence. But in modern 
times the study of religion has acquired new form and 
content, has projected itself upon new lines, has become 
possessed of a new spirit. The nature of this change is 
not that thoughtful men are less interested in what they 
themselves believe, but that they are more interested in 
what others believe, and more anxious to comprehend the 
relative values of all beliefs as factors in the evolution of 
the religious life of man in God's universe. In this sense 
the study of religion is not old, but new : it is the young- 
est, the fairest, the divinest of the sciences. It is not 
provincial; it is not national; it is not ecclesiastical; it is 
not racial; it is broadly, tenderly human. It knows no 
East, no West; it knows only that "God hath made of 
one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of 
the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed 
and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek 
after the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and 
find Him, though He be not far from every one of us, for 
in Him we live and move and have our being." ^ 

In the West — that is to say, throughout Europe and 
America — this new and beautiful science of religion 
almost has swept away the old provincialism that permit- 
ted one to cherish his own belief and contemptuously to 

1 Acts 27: 26-28. 



The Nature of Religion 7 

dismiss the beliefs of others as the meaningless vagaries 
of heathenism. Christians who still prefer that narrow- 
ness retain it at the price of dropping astern of the noblest 
modern thought. The religious thought of the West is 
being reconstructed on broader lines, and its leaders 
ascend to higher points of view and sweep a larger horizon. 
Nor is it difficult to account for this change, and to 
answer the questions put forth at Edinburgh, a few 
years since, by the Master of Balliol. "What is it," said 
he, "that has awakened the new modern interest in the 
science of religion, and has given rise to the persistent 
attempts which are now being made to investigate the 
facts of religious history in all times and places? What 
is it that has made us carry our inquiries beyond the Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments, which are directly con- 
nected with our own religious life, and beyond the classical 
mythology, which is immediately bound up .with our 
literary culture ; that has set to our scholars the task of 
analysing the sacred books of all nations, and seeking for 
the key of all the mythologies?"^ I do not know with 
what feelings Indians regard the modern interest shown 
by western scholars in the sacred writings of the East. I 
do not know whether, in your hearts, you observe this 
scrutiny with satisfaction, or whether it seems to you as 
the irritating curiosity of aliens, intruding into your 
sanctuaries of thought and handling with unhallowed 
touch your most venerated inheritances. But I beg leave 
to assure you that, while some promoters of the study of 
comparative religion may have no warmer interest in that 
research than critical analysis, the essential motives behind 
the new science of religion are reverential and full of ten- 
derness. These motives spring from the modern views of 

1 E. Caikd, The Evolution of Religion (Giffard Lectures), Vol. I, p. 12. 



8 Barrows Lectures 

the unity of mankind, of the co-operative evolution of the 
race, and of the origin of religion. You will permit me 
to say a word concerning each of these. 

It has been said that "the idea of the unity of man 
has, within the last century, become not merely a dogma, 
but an almost instinctive presupposition of all civilized 
men."^ This unity is not superficial and apparent, it is 
profound and esoteric ; it exists not in the speech or cus- 
tom, but in the spirit, of humanity, beneath and within all 
political, social, cultural, religious, racial distinctions. To 
affirm it is not to deny the reality or the reasonableness of 
such distinctions. To believe it is not to give one's self 
over to a mad democracy that would obliterate natural 
boundaries; nor is it to attack indiscriminately the insti- 
tutions of caste ; still less is it to dispose of the ancient 
variations of religious type by a process of blind negation. 
I hold that even the most rigorous tenure of the doctrines 
of caste is compatible with an acknowledgment of the unity 
of mankind ; and that, whatever our religious opinion may 
be, this acknowledgment is made an intellectual necessity 
by the results of scientific research into the anatomic struc- 
ture, the genius, the primitive conceptions of man at all 
times and throughout all races. I quite agree with 
Nadaillac in his statement: "We believe it impossible to 
misapprehend or mistake the multiplied proofs that flow 
from modern researches, all of which affirm with an irre- 
futable eloquence the unity of the human species."^ As 
this idea of the unity of mankind has become positive, tak- 
ing on the attributes of a living force, it has swept over 
the field of modern thinking with the transforming power 

1 Caied, loc. cit., p. 15. 

2 See a paper by Marquis de Nadaillac, translated from Revue des ques- 
tions scientifiques in Report of Board of Regents^ Smithsonian Institution, 1897 
(published by Soci6t6 scientifique de Bruxelles, 2d series, Vol. XII, October 20, 
1897). 



The Nature of Religion 9 

of a new dispensation. It has enlarged the scope of all 
the great human problems. 

Especially has it affected the problem of religion, which 
no longer can be a national or tribal or ecclesiastical prob- 
lem, but henceforth must be viewed as one of the universal 
human interests, a fact imbedded in the underlying unity 
of the race and expressing itself locally through many 
faiths and forms. 

The new science of religion takes note also of the 
co-operative evolution of the race. The family of man is 
one family ; the nature of man is one nature ; the identity 
of the human spirit persists always, everywhere, beneath 
all distinctions. So, as from the high towers of thought 
men have viewed the long track of history, they have come 
to realise that the condition of the human race is not fixed ; 
it advances, moving, as it were, toward a goal. In this 
evolutionary progress of the race, as in the struggle of 
personal existence, nations, like individuals, take part, con- 
tributing to, or fighting against the onward movement. 
That onward movement is spiritual as well as material; it 
consists not only in the extension of civilisation, the inter- 
change of arts, the communal use of sciences; it consists 
also in the evolution of the religious consciousness of man 
toward the absolute truth. In that evolution all religions 
make their contributions, and each, perchance, may give 
something that is necessary to the fulness of truth. The 
science of religion takes note of the evolutionary signifi- 
cance of every form of faith, and attempts to estimate its 
approximation to the absolute truth by its religious value 
in view of the requirements and possibilities of the spirit 
of man. 

But we must go one step farther in estimating the 
motives that impart to the new science of religion its rever- 



10 Barrows Lectures 

ence and its tenderness. To say that a sense of the oneness 
of the race of man has become a living force in the study of 
religion, and that the history of religion now is looked upon 
as an evolutionary process whereby the various branches 
of the human family have contributed to the sum of man's 
aspiration toward God, is not to exhaust the reasons why 
the modern science of religion is, in its best manifesta- 
tions, full of the notes of brotherhood and of reverence 
for the convictions of others. One other reason should be 
cited. Many of the noblest minds of our time are gain- 
ing a new view of the origin of religion. When we use the 
phrase "the origin of religion," we may mean one of two 
things: its historical beginning as an element in the evo- 
lution of the race, or its psychological source, its fountain 
and origin in the nature of man. I use the phrase in the 
latter sense, and this use will, I am sure, commend itself 
to my learned Indian hearers ; for all philosophical minds 
have a common interest in every attempt to determine the 
source, within ourselves, whence spring the religious aspi- 
rations and beliefs of man. 

It is impossible to satisfy thinkers of our time with 
the view that gained ascendency in France and England 
in the eighteenth century, that religion is the product of a 
system of fables and superstitions imposed upon man by 
priests acting from motives of self-interest. We can 
understand how from time to time philosophy has revolted 
from scholasticism and ecclesiasticism, asserting its right 
to think for itself; and how such men as Benedict Spinoza^ 
and John Toland,^ Europeans of the seventeenth century, 
themselves deeply religious, could, by their impassioned 
repudiations of priestcraft, encourage in their successors 

1 Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (ed. London, 1862), pp, 1^25. 
2TOLAND, Christianity Not Mysterious (London, 1696), pp. 3-30, 158-176. 



The Nature of Beligion 11 

the anti-religious spirit tiiat may be said to culminate in 
Voltaire. But, whatever our opinions about sacerdotalism 
may be, as students of the psychology of human life we 
know that priests are, not the creators, but the products 
of religion ; that " religion is older than any form of priest- 
hood;"^ and that the source of religion is not outside of 
us, but within ourselves. Nor can the thinker of today be 
satisfied with the attempt to account for religion upon the 
theory of a primitive revelation made to man. For not 
only is evidence of such a primitive revelation inaccessible, 
but the possibility of man's receiving and appropriating it, 
if it were given, seems to call for the presence, within him- 
self, antecedently, of qualifications that must be essentially 
religious. A religious revelation could possess no meaning 
for a non-religious being. Before a God can reveal his 
mind and will to man, man must be endowed with power to 
apprehend the thing revealed, and that power is religion. 
I need not say, that I believe in divine revelation, oral and 
written, and that that belief conditions all that I shall pre- 
sent in these lectures ; but I look in vain to that source for 
the spring of religion in man. That spring must be within 
himself.^ 

" Disregarding the theories of priestly invention and 
primitive revelation, modern thought has sought for that 
in man himself which could account psychologically for 
the great fact of religion. And in this search it has 
explored many lines. Some have attempted to find the 
well-spring of religion in the disposition of primitive 
peoples to connect the presence of spirits with certain 
natural objects, as trees, stones, streams, or with certain 
natural phenomena, as lightning, wind, and rain ; attribut- 

1 Jasteow, The Study of Beligion, p. 180. 

2 Cf. Fairbaien, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History (London, 
1876), pp. 13, 14. 



12 Barrows Lectures 

ing to emotions of terror, astonishment, or admiration, 
excited by those objects, the genesis of feelings afterwards 
evolved into the religious conceptions of civilised peoples.^ 
Others, reflecting npon the obvious mystery of death, and 
the removal of beloved or honoured personages from the 
visible world, have sought to show that in the worship of 
ancestors and the belief in ghosts we find the spring of 
that disposition to yearn toward the unseen and to be 
influenced by the unseen which grows ultimately into the 
experience of religion.^ Still others, regarding religion 
as an illusion, have claimed that it arises from man's 
consciousness of his own weakness, as he finds himself 
surrounded by the incalculable powers of nature. Over- 
whelmed by forces that disclose to him, through contrast, 
his own insignificance, he makes a blind and gloomy effort 
to propitiate those forces.' And others, rising to a higher 
ground, hold that we should look for the well-spring of 
religion, not in its most base and primitive forms, but in 
its maturest forms. They claim that the germinative 
principle of religion most clearly will disclose itself in the 
highest religion, even as we understand humanity best by 
studying the full-grown man rather than the undeveloped 
infant.* Upon this theory the psychological source of 
religion is very noble. It is not man's disposition to people 
woods and fields with spirits; it is not the worship of 
ancestral ghosts ; it is not the pessimistic struggle with 
the insuperable powers of nature. It is that which is 
most godlike in the soul of man, the perception of the 
Infinite, the yearning after the boundless, uncreated Mind 

1 Cf. throughout, for a theory of animism, Tylor's elaborate work, Frimu 
live Culture (2 vols., London, 1903). 

2 Cf. Spencee, Principles of Sociology, in loco. 

3 Cf Haetmann, Das Religidse, etc., p. 27. 

* For a fine discussion of this idea cf. Caied; op. cit., Vol! I, Lect. 2. 



The Nature of Religion 13 

that inhabiteth eternity. When I mention the earliest and 
chiefest of the modern scientific apologists of this theory 
of the psychological well-spring of religion, I name one 
for whom I believe all learned Indians entertain feelings 
of respect and friendship, the late Professor Friedrich 
Max Muller, of Oxford. It was his contention, maintained 
to the end of his long life of research, that the perception 
of the Infinite can be shown by historical evidence to have 
been the one element shared in common by all religions; 
beginning in the lower forms with the simple negation of 
what is finite, and the assertion of an invisible beyond, 
and leading up to a perceptive belief in that most real 
Infinite in which we live and move and have our being. 
To use his own words: "The source of all religion in the 
human heart is the perception of the Infinite, the yearning 
of the soul after God."^ 

As men accustomed to ponder this mystery of religion 
which we perceive to exist within ourselves, I feel that I 
carry your approval with me when I affirm that a phenom- 
enon so great in itself, so universal in its scope, cannot 
have originated in dreams, or in fears, or even in rever- 
ence for the dead. 

Such causes, however worthy in themselves, are inade- 
quate to produce a result that binds together all nations 
and kindreds and peoples and tongues in the brotherhood 
of a common experience, which, in its multifarious forms 
of expression, has been the most potent of all influences 
in shaping the world's history. I believe that you will 
give your assent to these affecting words concerning the 
origin of religion in the heart of man, spoken, in 1878, 
by one of the greatest of European scholars, Tiele, of 
Leyden: *'Can dreams have given rise to that faith which 

1 Cf. Max Mfi^LLEB, Theosophy, or Psychological Religion (Gi£Eord Lectures, 
1892), pp. 7, 480. 



14 Barrows Lectures 

has proved so stupendous a power in the world's history, 
or to those hopes which have sustained millions of our 
fellow-men amidst terrible sufferings, and lightened their 
eyes in the agony of death ? Some people may answer 
in the affirmative. But it is certainly not these imagin- 
ings that give rise to religion. The process is the very 
reverse. It is man's original, unconscious, innate sense of 
infinity that gives rise to his first stammering utterances of 
that sense, and to all his beautiful dreams of the past and 
the future. These utterances and these dreams may have 
long since passed away, but the sense of infinity from 
which they proceed remains a constant quantity. It is 
inherent in the human soul. It lies at the root of man's 
whole spiritual life."^ 

This view of the origin of religion compels us to 
advance one step farther, even to the question: Whence 
this "original, unconscious, innate sense of infinity"? 
Whence this yearning after God which we share in com- 
mon, "whate'er our name or sign"? Can there be any 
answer save one to a question so august ? Our sense of 
the infinite is from the Infinite. Our yearning for God is 
from God, His Spirit in ourselves ; for we are His offspring. 
As, in our noblest human fellowships, heart answers unto 
heart, sensation and emotion travelling along the lines of our 
common humanity, so, in our involuntary desires toward 
Deity (in whatsoever terms we may define our conceptions 
of Deity), aspirations and yearnings go forth upon the 
currents of a divine life within ourselves, inbreathed from 
the infinite Source of life. 

These are the grounds upon which the science of reli- 
gion may be said to rest ; these the considerations that, for 
many of the western scholars, have added to its academi- 

i Cf. TiELE, Elements of the Science of Religion, Vol. II, p. 233. 



The Nature of Beligion 15 

cal and critical interest a deep reverence and a most human 
tenderness. The sense of the unity of mankind has become 
a positive force, tending to bridge the old chasms between 
nations. The conception of the evolutionary process in 
history has broken the old tyranny of bigotry and has 
gained for every form of faith the right seriously to be 
studied. Above all, the better understanding of what 
religion is in its psychological origin, even the stirring 
within the heart of man of infinite yearnings, begotten 
in him through the Spirit of the Infinite, has made it pos- 
sible for the adherents of faiths that once fought each 
other with the sword to meet in affectionate communion, 
and to examine, without bitterness or rivalry, whatever, to 
one or the other, may seem most precious for himself and 
most helpful for his brother-man. 

It is upon these grounds that I invite you to enter 
upon the study of a religion, and to do this in the modern 
spirit and from the modern point of view. If the scope 
and the spirit of the Barrows Lectureship were less broad 
and less irenic than they are understood to be, it would 
not cause surprise if so direct an invitation to study the 
salient points of the Christian religion were met with 
coldness. Nor would it be difficult for learned Hindus 
to defend that coldness with weighty arguments. For 
from the past, from the present, and from the future 
emerge, at the call of Hinduism, arguments that appear 
to justify indifference, if not hostility, toward the religion 
which bears the name of Christ. 

From the past comes the argument of superior antiq- 
uity. The religion of the New Testament is relatively 
young, as it stands beneath the Syrian sky of the first 
century, distrusted and despised by the Judaism from 
which it was evolved ; ignored by the Greek and the Latin 



16 Barrows Lectures 

culture to which, soon and vitally, it was to be related ; 
unknown and undreamed of by the Aryan faiths of India, 
which even then were hoary with age and opulent with 
tradition. In the biography of the Founder of Christian- 
ity is recorded a touching episode of His childhood. His 
parents had brought Him, then a boy of twelve, from their 
home in the northern province, Galilee, to Jerusalem, in 
the southern province, Judaea, that they might attend the 
annual religio.us festival of the Passover. That duty 
done, they joined the train of pilgrims returning to the 
north, only to find that their son was missing. Dis- 
tressed they sought Him everywhere, turning back to the 
Holy City. And there, within the portico of the temple, 
they found their son, His slight boyish figure the centre 
of a group of venerable doctors of the law ; His guileless 
face in strange contrast with the grave countenances of 
those who heard, astonished, the voice of wisdom proceed- 
ing from the lips of infancy. Even so stands the religion 
of Jesus Christ in the portico of history, its guileless 
youth surrounded by the older faiths of mankind. It 
bears upon itself that strange, sweet dignity that 
sometimes sits upon the brow of childhood ; that unblem- 
ished charm of purity, that unstudied prescience of 
destiny, that divine intuition of wisdom. It attracts the 
scrutiny, even though it fail to win the confidence, of 
more ancient religions. Yet one cannot wonder if those 
ancient faiths withdraw in coldness from this that stands 
in the garments of youth amid the solemn shadows of 
antiquity. 

From the present comes an argument even more potent 
to justify the oriental mind in cold withdrawal from the 
study of Christianity. It is the argument of East against 
West, of Asia against Europe ; it is the strained relations 



The Nature of Beligion 17 

of oriental institutions, social, civil, religious, political, 
the offspring of immemorial custom and tendency, toward 
a faith that has rooted itself in the soil of western life 
and entwined its tendrils around western usage, senti- 
ment, and belief, until it -has become identified with the 
West ; and any attempt to commend it to the considera- 
tion of Asiatic minds may be construed as an effort to 
exploit a product of western civilisation. The nations of 
the West for the most part have embraced Christianity, 
They have saturated it with the genius, built up around 
it the institutions, fastened upon it the local names and 
signs, loaded it with the customs, armed it with the 
weapons, of the western world. Europe has European- 
ised the religion of Christ, until he who looks at it from 
the outside may be pardoned for failing to see the force 
of its claim to be more than an ethnic cult. Until it can be 
shown that western Christianity is but a local adaptation 
of that which in essence is not western, nor eastern, but 
for whomsoever can receive it, it cannot be wondered at 
that an oriental to whom the manners and spirit of the 
West are in part inexplicable, in part irritating, should 
say coldly to Christianity : "What have I to do with 
thee?" 

From the future emerges, at the call of Hinduism, an 
argument for indifference toward the faith that bears 
the name of Christ. It is the assumption that the 
philosophical basis of Christianity and the philosophical 
basis of Hinduism are and ever must remain mutually 
subversive ; that, in respect of the fundamental concep- 
tions of God and the soul, the Christian and the disciples 
of Hindu philosophical systems never can approach any 
common standing-ground, whereon discussion may 
become intelligible. It is assumed that, in the nature of 



18 Baif*rows Lectures 

the case, a basis for mutuality and fraternal contempla- 
tion of Christian ideas is unattainable ; that the categories 
of thought are unrelated ; that those ideas which are most 
ultimate and fixed in the philosophy of Christianity are 
precisely the ones which in the philosophy of the Ved- 
antist, for example, ever must be most thoroughly dis- 
approved and rejected ; that the terms in which self thinks 
of self within the lines of the most serious Christian phi- 
losophy ever must be more empty than the vacant air, 
more meaningless than the chatter of birds in the ear of 
him who is Brahma. 

Believe me that I do not underestimate the gravity of 
these considerations, each one of which gives rise to 
serious reflections. It is true that Christianity, among 
the religious systems that have controlled large sections 
of the human race, is the youngest of all, Mohammedan- 
ism alone being excepted. It is true that the thought 
and life of the West, having adopted the religion of 
Christ from a very early date, have developed local adap- 
tations of its belief and its practices that are essentially 
western ; adaptations that have so modified Christianity, 
stamping it with the European hall-mark, as to make it 
difficult for the oriental mind to realise that the historic 
origin of Christianity is Asiatic and not European. It is 
true that the philosophical basis of Hinduism, its deepest 
presupposition concerning each of the three germinal 
conceptions, God, the World and Self, appears to be 
wholly incompatible with and wholly subversive of the 
corresponding conception as set forth in the popular and 
conventional presentations of the Christian religion. 
These are very serious considerations. And I can con- 
ceive that, under certain circumstances, these considera- 
tions might suffice to close the ear of eastern culture 



The Nature of Religion 19 

against Christian argument, and to avert the oriental face 
in cold disdain from one offering those arguments. 

But I apprehend no such unfavourable issue under the 
present circumstances. And this for reasons political, 
religious, personal. I come, not as a European, but as an 
American. Even as the faith in which I am a believer 
stands among the older faiths of mankind as the fair young 
Christ among the venerable doctors in the temple, so 
stands the nation that I represent, in the freshness of its 
happy youth, among the elder and more heavily encum- 
bered nations of the world ; and I think that I may affirm 
the relations of America to India to have been never 
political, never governmental; always fraternal, sympa- 
thetic, respectful. Again, I come not as a churchman, 
representing any one of the ecclesiastical divisions of 
Christendom, or seeking to promote the advance of some 
western modification of the Christian idea, in authority 
and influence over Indian life. I come as the represen- 
tative of a University that, itself a seeker after truth, hon- 
ours all engaged in that quest, and that conceives nothing 
to be more worthy of intelligent minds than dispassionate 
comparison of ideas touching the highest of all subjects, 
the profoundest of all mysteries — God, the World, and the 
Soul. Finally, I come not with the presumptuous belief 
that you are unacquainted with the main positions of my 
religion. I do not forget that India is the age-long home 
of religious study, and that Christianity in some of its 
forms was known in India before the discovery of America. 
Nor do I come as a controversialist, eager to assail the 
beliefs of others and to plant the standard of conquest 
upon their ruins. Farther than East from West is the 
ambition of controversy from my heart. I come in the 
spirit of peace, of gentleness, of humility, to tell you what 



20 Barrows Lectures 

the religion of Christ means to one of the humblest of his 
disciples ; to point out to you what that religion is, in its 
pure, unadulterated essence, whensoever one will venture 
past the barriers of custom, of conventionality, of dogmatic 
controversy, which have been built up by human authority 
or human prejudice, and walk with Christ, the eternal Son 
of the Father, in the calm, sweet garden of His own truth. 

My chief ambition is that, by the exercise of mutual 
confidence and through the medium of intellectual fellow- 
ship, we shall lift this discussion to a high level; even to 
a plane where we can examine Christianity upon its merits 
and view it in its essence, undisturbed by those historic 
modifications and those local side issues which have opened, 
in West and East alike, questions painful, perplexing, and 
unprofitable. 

If this end is to be reached, even the calm, intelligent 
discussion of some leading principles of Christian belief, a 
certain mental attitude is desirable on the part, not only of 
the lecturer, but of those to whom he speaks. With con- 
fiding frankness the lecturer already has disclosed his own 
mental attitude. He has pointed out that it is non-contro- 
versial, irenic, full of respect for the convictions of those 
whom he addresses. May he be permitted now to describe 
what, in his judgment, should be the mental attitude of 
those who, trained under other systems of belief and hold- 
ing with more or less tenacity to those systems, do yet 
recognise, as persons of intelligence, that the Christian 
religion is a considerable factor in the world's history, 
and do desire, from an intellectual point of view, to per- 
ceive more clearly what there is in Christianity that has 
won not only the assent, but the passionate devotion, of 
many individuals of undoubted spiritual and philosophical 
power. 



The Nature of Beligion 21 

There may, with reason, be asked of those oriental 
hearers who would lift this discussion to that high level 
where Christianity may be considered upon its merits, a 
mental attitude that shall consist chiefly in three under- 
takings; namely, an intellectual elimination, an historical 
retrospect, a philosophical adjustment. With a brief yet 
careful setting forth of these elements of a desirable men- 
tal attitude for the study of Christianity I shall beg leave 
to close my first, and introductory, lecture. 

For the eastern student of religion who consents to exam- 
ine Christianity upon its merits, it is essential that he make 
certain intellectual eliminations; that is to say, he must 
expel from his mind and dismiss from his religious prob- 
lem certain considerations that are wont to insinuate them- 
selves into all oriental study of the Christian religion and 
to vitiate the conclusions of the student. These considera- 
tions are political — the entanglement of Christianity with 
civil and military powers of government; ecclesiastical — 
the entanglement of Christianity with the sectarian dis- 
putes of Christians ; ethical — the entanglement of Chris- 
tianity with the moral unworthiness of many of its nomi- 
nal representatives. For purposes of investigation into 
the essence of the Christian religion these intellectual 
eliminations are necessary. 

To the student of history it is obvious that the civil 
and military systems of so-called Christian nations must 
not be confused with the spiritual content of that religion 
whose most holy precepts and most commanding ideals 
often have been set aside or profaned by the pride, or the 
ambition, or the greed of governing powers. When the 
sacred Person of Christ appeared on earth. He stood alone 
in the midst of civil and military powers; identified with 
none, despised by some, superior to all. Around Him He 



22 Barrows Lectures 

gathered a group of apostles, spirits kindred with His own 
— a little flock, as sheep in the midst of wolves. For the 
early centuries of the Christian religion there was in store 
only persecution at the hands of the state. The disciples 
of Christ, like their Master, who Himself was put to death 
by the act of military government, had not where to lay 
their heads. They were accounted as the offscouring of 
the earth. It was not until the fourth century that an 
imperial hand conferred upon Christianity the doubtful 
boon of royal favour, spread over it the pallium of august 
protection, made it a religion of the state, and opened 
those long, complex, and conflicting annals of European 
history wherein governments have warred against one 
another in the common name of Christ, and have invoked 
that name to adorn the beneficent policies of civilisation 
or to justify the stern necessities of conquest. 

But the relation of civil and military government to 
Christianity, whether just or unjust, admirable or despi- 
cable, is an irrelevant matter for him who, as a student of 
religion, passing far within the sanctuary of meditation, 
contemplates the essential sacredness of that on which the 
unhallowed hand of worldly power has fallen. He forgets, 
he eliminates from the mind, the efforts of ambition to 
make use of Christianity for it's own selfish ends. He 
passes by thrones and republics, senates and armies, 
tyrannies and revenges, marking the tortuous course of 
history in the West ; he averts the mind from the thunder 
of battle, and the cries of the dying, and the garments of 
the warrior rolled in blood, on fields where sword crossed 
sword in the name of Him who was called the Prince of 
Peace; he leaves the trampled fields of Europe for Euro- 
peans to explore ; and in the olive groves of Palestine he 
questions Him at whose cradle the eastern sages wor- 



The Nature of Beligion 23 

shipped, but through whose broken heart the Roman 
thrust a spear: What meanest Thou, O Teacher, when 
Thou say est: I am the Light of the world: He that fol- 
loweth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the 
light of life? 

There is also an ecclesiastical elimination to be made 
by the eastern student of religion, who consents to examine 
Christianity upon its merits. Christianity must be dis- 
entangled from the sectarian disputes of Christians. That 
great religions give rise to great discussions is a truth that 
exalts, not discredits, the dignity of human beliefs. A 
religion whose leading ideas were so axiomatic as to 
arouse no discussion would be discredited by its own pet- 
tiness. The various philosophical schools of Hinduism, 
the sects of Islam, are intellectual evidences of the impor- 
tance of the ideas under consideration. That Christianity 
both in the Eastern Church and in the Western Church 
should chart its painful course by controversial land- 
marks, and should complicate its original simplicity with 
sectarian subdivisions, was a psychological necessity com- 
mon to great religions. Whether the net result of these 
subdivisions has been wholesome for western Christianity 
is an open question. Some deplore them openly, inter- 
preting catholicity as uniformity, denouncing each great 
division that has occurred in the ecclesiastical evolution 
of Europe as a sinful defection from the primitive truth, 
persistence in which state of separation is held to be per- 
petual injury to the good name of Christ's religion. 
Others view the matter differently, agreeing more or less 
closely with one who lately has said:^ "The formation of 
sects within a religion, while in one sense a disintegrating 
process, is, in another, a manifestation of vitality and of 

1 Jastbow, The Study of Beligion, p. 61. 



24 Barrows Lectures 

healthful growth, quite as much as the growth of a city is 
indicated by the opening up of new streets and byways. 
A religion without sects is necessarily limited in its range ; 
and so long as racial differences among nations exist, with 
variations in temperament, the same religion in various geo- 
graphical centres is bound to take on various forms." But 
the oriental in quest of the essential ideas of Christianity 
need not concern himself with controversies that divide 
the West, save as those controversies attest the vitality of 
religious thought in Europe, and prove that a religion 
cradled on Asiatic soil and nurtured by Semitic influences 
has had power for two thousand years to affect and to agi- 
tate down to its foundations the entire structure of Aryan 
life throughout the western hemisphere. Should Chris- 
tianity ever attract India as it has attracted Europe, the 
inherent immensity of its conceptions will evolve contro- 
versies suited to the eastern points of view; and will dis- 
turb Asiatic society with that majestic unrest which, like 
the heaving of the ocean, reveals the greatness of the dis- 
turbing power. The restless movements of religious con- 
troversy, like the swaying branches of the forest, announce 
the presence of a mighty force pressing upon them. He 
who would know the essence of Christianity must forget 
the swaying branches of controversy, and ask of the view- 
less wind that moves them : Whence art thou, O wind of 
God, and whither dost thou go ? 

Beyond the political elimination which disentangles 
Christianity from civil and military governments, and 
beyond the ecclesiastical elimination which extricates the 
essence of religion from the discussions and disputes that 
arise about it, the eastern student of the faith of Christ 
must make also an ethical elimination, separating Chris- 
tianity from the moral un worthiness of some of its nominal 



The Nature of Religion 25 

representatives. Often has it been said that the Christian 
religion has suffered more at the hands of its professed 
followers than at the hands of its avowed enemies. In a 
sense that is true. Christ was betrayed by one of His own 
disciples ; and from that time onward His religion has been 
subject to misrepresentation through the folly, the care- 
lessness, the selfishness, or the baseness of those who, con- 
ventionally, were related to His cause. But to refuse to 
study the essential content of the religion of Christ 
because one, nominally His disciple, had shown moral 
un worthiness, is like refusing to make use of gold and sil- 
ver because a base counterfeit coin has been thrust upon 
one by fraud. The philosophical method is to ignore the 
ethical deformity that garbs itself in the garment of reli- 
gion ; to press past the feebleness, the distortion, the pov- 
erty of ideal, the earthbound sordidness, the hypocritical 
profession, the vapid formalism, that obstruct like weeds 
and underbrush the approaches to the Heavenly Mount; 
and to climb to that high level where, transfigured in love 
and light. He stands who is the brightness of the Father's 
glory and the express image of His Person. Judge Chris- 
tianity not by the poor and perishable types that profess 
connection with it and belie its spirit. Judge Christianity 
by Christ, its incarnate Archetype, and by those rarest souls 
who, greater than all the churchly names they bore, have 
possessed His spirit, have followed in His train. And why ? 
Because Christ is not European and Christianity is no 
product of the West. The West is seeking, indeed, to 
comprehend it ; the West is climbing, though with piteous 
stumblings and fallings back, toward the Heavenly Mount. 
But Christ towers above European civilisation as the 
highest peak of the Himalayas towers above the cities of 
the river plains ; a white Perfection that rivets the eyes of 
the world ; a bright Epiphany of perfect love. 



26 Barrows Lectures 

Such is the threefold intellectual elimination which 
should be made by each oriental mind that may desire to 
examine Christianity upon its merits; the essence of the 
religion must be disentangled from the acts of civil and 
military governments adopting the official name of Chris- 
tian, from the inevitable controversies that follow in the 
train of all germinal ideas, and from the unworthiness of 
those whose nominal connection with Christianity has 
been one of its most stubborn embarrassments. 

In addition to this intellectual elimination, he who, as 
an oriental, would acquire the mental attitude suited to 
the contemplation of Christianity, must seek to attain it 
by a certain historical retrospect. It is related in one of 
the gospels that a certain man " sought to see Jesus who He 
was, and could not for the crowd." Unwilling to be 
baffled, he climbed into a tree and gained, over all inter- 
vening obstructions, clear vision of the face of Christ. 
Like him must the eastern student of religion, who would 
see Christianity in its essence, elevate himself above the 
crowd of intervening objects and look back upon its his- 
toric evolution, as it relates itself to the genealogy of races. 
It is impracticable, under the time limitations of these 
lectures, to enter the wide, alluring field of research 
connected with the origin of races. But it is equally 
impossible to advert, however briefly, to the historical 
antecedents of Christianity without mentioning two race- 
names that stand related thereto, mysteriously, in the 
annals of thought — the Aryan and the Semite. The Aryan, 
when all modifications of time, separation, and race- 
absorption are taken into account, yet remains the com- 
mon ancestor of Indian and European. To be reminded 
of that common ancestry may or may not be agreeable to 
modern Hindus. For myself, as a man of Aryan blood, I 



The Nature of Religion 27 

welcome whatever assures to me the honour of kinship 
with India. Nevertheless, it is fanciful and speculative 
to press too strongly the identity of Indo-European peoples 
today, even though Ihering be right when he says: "The 
Hindu and the European of today differ greatly, and yet 
they are children of one and the same mother, twin brothers 
who originally were exactly alike." ^ Where was the cradle 
of our common ancestry, is a problem that forever fasci- 
nates and forever may elude the search of those to whom 
the secrets of the past are precious. Site after site has 
been affirmed, only to be denied by later students. The 
theory of central Asia^ as the primitive home has given 
place, under the pressure of results in the study of lan- 
guage and culture, to the theory of the steppes of eastern 
Europe ; yet even those most devoted to the quest speak 
cautiously of those results. ' ' How the proposed hypothesis,' ' 
says Schrader, *'as to the original home of the Indo- 
European will be affected by anthropology, when its results 
have been sifted as we may expect them to be ; how it will 
be affected by the discovery of the prehistoric remains, 
when the treasures concealed in the soil of south Russia 
have been fully brought to light and thoroughly examined, 
remains to be seen." ^ Nevertheless, though the place of 
the cradle be obscured amidst the mists of antiquity, the 
diverging paths of the children issuing therefrom still 
may be traced. Eastward, to some second home where 
evolved the splendid life and literature of primitive Hin- 
duism and Zoroastrianism, proceeded the Indo-Iranian 
branches of the Aryan stock, to divide again, and pass, 

1 Rudolph von Iheking, Evolution of the ^r?/an-'( English translation, 1897), 
Introduction, p. 20. 

a Of. M. MtJLiiEB's Lectures, Vol. I, pp. 239 S. ; Sayce, Principles, pp. 101 and 
many others. 

3 Cf. O. ScHEADEE, Sprachvevgleichung und Urgeschichte (Jena, 1883) ; Eng- 
lish title, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples (London, 1890), p. 443. 



28 Barrows Lectures 

one of them as a nation of shepherds and sun-worshippers 
to the mountain ranges of Persia, the other as a nation 
of poets and philosophers, epic-bearers and conquerors, 
through the passes of the Northwest Hills into the illimit- 
able plains and plateaux of Hindustan. Westward, 
toward the Carpathians, the Danube, and the sea, to their 
second home upon the priceless black earth where now 
wave the richest grain fields of Europe^ proceeded the 
forerunners of Greek and Latin, Teuton, Celt, and Slav, 
to evolve their characteristic types of culture, and to 
break again into groups that wandered and settled from 
the North Sea to the Mediterranean. 

-But not from the eastern branch and not from the 
western branch sprang that faith which bears the name 
and superscription of Jesus Christ. In the ancient 
Hebrew book of Job occurs a passage describing the 
search for the origin of wisdom. "Where shall wisdom 
be found, and where is the place of understanding ? The 
depth saith. It is not in me ; and the sea saith, It is not in 
me." So shall he be answered who seeks the genesis of 
Christianity amidst the traditions of the Aryan race. 
From India, the breeding-ground of mighty faiths, returns 
the answer: "It is not in me." From Europe, the fertile 
home of western culture, comes the echo : " It is not with 
me." If, on the one hand, the Indian refuses to be 
responsible for a religion whose philosophical basis 
appears to violate every canon of his thought; on the 
other hand, the European who owes to that religion all 
that makes his civilisation substantial, his culture pro- 
gressive, his life worth living, cannot claim the honour of 
reckoning among his ancestral distinctions the genesis of 
Christianity from the Aryan stock. 

1 Cy. SCHEADBB, op. cit., p. 432. 



The Nature of Eeligion 29 

Like the voice of one crying in the wilderness, emer- 
ging from scenes as far from the civilisation of Europe as 
from the thought of India, comes the message of Chris- 
tianity, borne by that mysterious branch of another race, 
the Jews of Palestine, at once the most distinguished and 
the most afl9.icted members of the Semitic family. Far 
different from the primitive home of the Aryans was that 
which the predominant opinion of modern scholars^ desig- 
nates as the starting-point of the race that in its southern 
branches retained and still retains marks of the stern 
exclusiveness implanted within it by the peculiar condi- 
tions of desert life.^ 

If the Arabian desert be the cradle of the Semites, we 
find in the austerity of its seclusion the clue to the ethnic 
loneliness, and also to the inclination toward an awe- 
inspiring monotheism, that grew with the growth of that 
sublimest offspring of the Semitic stock, the Hebrew 
nation. Well has it been said by my distinguished prede- 
cessor in the Barrows Lectureship, Principal Fairbairn 
of Mansfield College : *' The Hebrews may stand as the 
highest example of the Semitic religious genius, espe- 
cially in its creative form. They were as a nation always 
insignificant, indeed almost politically impotent. Their 
country was small, little larger at its best than a fourth 
of England. Their history was a perpetual struggle for 
national existence. Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria, Persia, 
Greece, Rome were successively either their masters or 
protectors, and their often threatened national existence 
was at last trampled out by the legions of Titus and 
Hadrian, and themselves sent to wander over the earth as 
a strange example of a destroyed nation, but an inde- 

1 Cf. W. RoBEKTSON Smith, The Religion of the Semites, p. 10. 

2 Cf. Gr. A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins (1902), p. 28. 



30 Barrows Lectures 

structible people. Without the commercial or colonising 
energy of their Phoenician kinsmen ; without the archi- 
tectural genius and patient industry which built the 
monuments and cities of Egypt ; without the ambition 
and courage which raised their Assyrian brethren to 
empire and a sovereign civilisation; without the poetic 
and speculative genius of the Greeks ; without the martial 
and political capacity of the Eomans, the politically unim- 
portant and despised Hebrews have excelled these gifted 
nations, singly and combined, in religious faculty and in 
the power exercised through religion on mankind,"^ 

In the light of this historical retrospect it is obvious 
that the oriental who would see the essence of Christianity 
must elevate himself above the intervening structures of 
European ecclesiasticism and dogmatism that crowd the 
foreground and interrupt the view. He must look to 
another race than that whence himself and the European 
sprang ; he must rid his mind of the irritating thought 
that some crude theological product of the modern West 
is being offered in competition with the venerable unfold- 
ings of Brahmanism. He must look to Asia, the land of 
his own origin. He must look to the Semite, an ancestry 
as ancient as his own, to discern the source whence came 
those conceptions of God, the world, and the soul which, 
ascending through the various stages in the evolution of 
Hebrew thought, find expression, interpretation, verifica- 
tion, and completion in Christ. 

And yet, though I remind you that the antecedents of 
Christianity are Semitic, as an Aryan myself I would 
not have you think of Christianity as the mere outcome 
and conclusion of Judaism. A much broader view should 
be taken. While, on the one hand Christianity is no 

^Cf. A. M. Faiebaien, Studies in the Philosophy of Religion and History 
(1876). 



The Nature of Religion 31 

suddenly conceived system, no unpremeditated religion, 
but "the ripe fruit of the historical development of 
humanity, and especially of the people of Israel,"^ it is 
utterly impossible to explain the scope and range of lead- 
ing Christian ideas by limiting our account of the genesis 
of Christianity to its Jewish inheritance. For, as our 
study of those ideas advances, I shall hope to show you 
that the essence of Christianity embodies, unifies, and 
co-ordinates, with conceptions that are evolved from 
Judaism, other conceptions that are most dear to Aryan 
minds, and most essential to the Aryan intuition of the 
nature of God.^ 

I shall try to show you that all of these ideas — those 
that come of the lineage of Semitic thought, those that 
are as the very breath of life to the Aryan self -conscious- 
ness — meet and mingle in Christ. I shall try to show 
you upon what grounds I believe that Christ is universal ; 
appearing, indeed, as the Child of a Semitic mother, and 
the fruition of a Semitic hope, but revealing, in His high 
prerogative of Divine Sonship, truth larger than Jew could 
comprehend, truth that in its immensity of scope, its 
reconciling power, its infinite adaptation to human 
requirements is only now, at the dawn of the twentieth 
century, beginning to be realised, even by its hereditary 
champions. 

I beg leave to close this lecture by calling your atten- 
tion to the third and final element in the mental attitude 
of the cultured oriental who would examine the essence of 
Christian belief. I have adverted to the intellectual elimi- 
nations that should be made, touching matters associated 
with Christianity, yet irrelevant thereto ; I have pointed 

1 Cf. Pfleidebeb, Philosophy and Development of Religion (1894) , Vol. II, p. 38. 

2 Cf. TiELE, Elements of the Science of Religion^ Vol. I, pp. 150-81 ; cf. BuDDK, 
Beligion of Israel to the Exile, p. 218. 



32 Barrows Lectures 

out the historical retrospect whereby the Semitic origin 
of this faith is seen. I would speak in closing of the 
philosophical adjustment that should be undertaken by all 
orientals, and especially by Hindus, who may be inter- 
ested in the study of Christianity sufficiently to wish to 
know what inspirations it offers, what consolations it 
affords, to minds that certainly cannot be called super- 
stitious, bigoted, or ignorant. 

It is after reflection that I use the expression "philo- 
sophical adjustment." By no means would I use the words 
philosophical surrender. Such an expression, under the 
circumstances, would appear to be particularly infelicitous, 
if not offensive. It would imply, on the one hand, that I 
have the rashness to ask minds that have inherited 
thousands of years of philosophical reflection upon the 
problems of the universe, and that have confronted those 
problems in a certain attitude, to surrender that inherit- 
ance and to abandon that attitude. I trust that I am 
incapable of such rashness and that I am above the unin- 
telligence that could deem it possible for serious minds to 
shift, at will, the deep foundations of thought. 

And, on the other hand, to ask of you philosophical 
surrender would seem to imply that I look upon Chris- 
tianity as the product of western philosophy, and that in 
order to comprehend Christianity, the learned East must 
stultify itself and trample its traditions in the dust. To 
admit this on my part would be to abandon the deepest 
and dearest interest that brings me to India. I come to 
India because I believe that Christianity is not the prod- 
uct of western philosophy, but is something greater and 
far more important. I come to India because I believe 
that some of your purest and loftiest philosophical pre- 
suppositions and some of the purest and loftiest philo- 



The Nature of Religion 33 

sophical pre-suppositions of the West are like two mighty 
rivers bending toward one another from the eternal hills 
in which are the springs of both, rivers that may 
meet, converge, and flow onward, in one broader channel 
toward the sea. 

Therefore what I suggest is not philosophical sur- 
render, but philosophical adjustment. The connotation 
of this term may be shown by an illustration. Many 
years ago an English novelist, writing on the labour 
question, and desiring to promote among possessors of 
capital a better understanding of the point of view of 
champions of labour, gave to his book the title : Put 
Yourself in His Place. The phrase serves my purpose 
as suggesting in the present connection a philosophical 
attitude. The Indian philosophy, having evolved along 
a course uninfluenced by West Asian and European 
thought,^ naturally assumes that it has nothing in common 
with the philosophical postulates of the Christian religion. 
Its chance contacts with those who speak the message of 
Christianity without reference to its philosophical postu- 
lates may confirm the assumption that this great faith 
of the West, with its accent on objective personality, and 
reality of conduct, and the value of experience, is as the 
sounding brass and the tinkling cymbal to minds con- 
secrated to the majestic idealism of the Upanishads, 
and to the swallowing up of merit and demerit in that 
transcendent knowledge which reveals to the enlightened 
the fundamental identity of the individual soul with the 
highest Brahma.' 

This attitude of intellectual disdain, however natural, 
precludes the possibility of an intelligible discussion of 

1 Cf. Deussen, " Outlines of Indian Philosophy," Indian Antiquary (Decem- 
ber, 1900), Parts I and II. 

2 Cf, Thibaut, Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXXIX, Introduction, pp. 
xxiv-xxvii. 



S4: Barrows Lectures 

Christianity. There remains no basis on which to found 
such discussion. There are no common terms that may- 
be employed for the exchange of ideas. 

My suggestion, therefore, is philosophical adjustment 
of the kind indicated by the felicitous title of the 
English novel, Put Yourself in His Place. Such adjust- 
ment should be mutual. The mind that inherits the 
complex European philosophy, to the development of 
which Semitic, Zoroastrian, and Grecian forces have con- 
tributed,^ ought to put itself in sympathetic relation with 
the germinal thoughts of the Vedanta-Sutras. The mind 
that has gained its training and its point of view 
altogether from oriental sources should turn itself without 
prejudice to the exponent of Christianity, with sincere 
disposition to know what he means and whereon he 
founds his meaning. 

Such philosophical adjustment in our present dis- 
cussion I suggest in a loving and respectful spirit. It is 
to be commended to the thoughtful on many grounds, 
but especially on these grounds : 

It involves no stultifying surrender of one's intel- 
lectual inheritances. He who thus puts himself philo- 
sophically in the place of another, representing a foreign 
school of thought, commits no treachery against his 
religious or scholastic ancestry ; shows no base ingratitude 
toward departed seers who, loving their race and their 
country better than life, toiled over the problems of 
destiny and committed to succeeding generations the 
fruits of their labours. 

Again, this philosophical adjustment implies no hasty 
self-commitment to the truth of that which is presented 
by another. The attitude proposed is judicial, delibera- 

1 Cf. Deussen, Indian Antiquary (December, 1900), Part I. 



The Nature of Religion 35 

tive, open-minded ; it is willing to inspect the foundation 
of another's thought ; to see, as through another's eyes, the 
meaning of life to him ; to feel, as with another's heart, 
the value of that which, for him, is the truth concerning 
God and the soul. After one has done this, there 
remains undiminished one's power to reject, or to 
condemn. 

Finally: this philosophical adjustment, mutual and 
friendly, is to be commended because it is worthy of the 
unity of the race of mankind. After all is said and done, 
it remains that we are men, born of woman, born into one 
world. Whatever the problems of our pre-existence may 
have been, whatever the problems of our future estate, 
disembodied or re-incarnate, may be, here for a season we 
stand together, the same sun lighting our day, the same 
stars tempering our night ; and birth, and growth, and love, 
and sorrow, and death our common discipline in the 
school of life. We can afford to open our hearts to one 
another ; to trust each other with the secrets of our faith 
as we ascend toward the Infinite ; to look with kind eyes 
into each other's souls. 

In such a spirit may we approach this study of Chris- 
tianity which I have conceived in love and would utter 
with humility ; on such a basis of mutual honour and con- 
fidence may we stand together and commune of Him in 
whom, by whatsoever name we call Him, through whatso- 
ever veils we see Him, we live and move and have our being. 



SECOND LECTURE 

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF GOD AND ITS RELATION TO 
EXPERIENCE 

In opening my second lecture, the theme of which is 
"The Christian Idea of God and Its Relation to Experi- 
ence," I shall venture to remind you of the mental attitude 
that, by virtue of the friendly understanding existing be- 
tween us, I am permitted to attribute to my learned 
hearers. It is assumed to contain three elements: an in- 
tellectual elimination, an historical retrospect, a philo- 
sophical adjustment. The intellectual elimination fulfils 
itself through the dismissal from your minds, as irrelevant 
to our present discussion, of these considerations: that 
Christianity is less ancient than the Aryan faiths of 
India; that in Europe, Christianity has contracted en- 
tangling relations with civil and military government; 
and that wherever, throughout the world, nominally Chris- 
tian communities exist, they contain a proportion of indi- 
viduals morally discreditable. These considerations, how- 
ever true in themselves, have no bearing upon the present 
discussion. The historical retrospect implies your observ- 
ance of the fact that the Christian religion springs not 
from European, but Asiatic, soil — a product of Eastern, not 
Western, culture; and that, while it owes its full develop- 
ment to the contributions made by Aryan philosophy and 
Aryan theism, it is in essence an outcome from that 
religiously eminent and politically unimportant people, 
the Hebrew branch of the Semitic stock. The philo- 
sophical adjustment implies sentiment rather than action ; 
the kindly spirit that welcomes comparison of points of 



The Christian Idea of God 37 

view; the open mind that, upon broad human grounds, 
receives and ponders results attained by other seekers after 
God ; the judicial temper that, scorning prejudice and pas- 
sion, estimates religious values by the eternal standards of 
truth and righteousness. 

It is not only easy, but delightful, to speak to minds 
adopting such an attitude toward that which, in the order 
of thought, must be our first subject of inquiry: the 
Christian idea of God and its relation to experience. By 
many chief thinkers of the western world the idea of 
God is esteemed to be the ultimate end and goal of 
knowledge.^ Thought in its evolution has passed through 
stages, wherein, for a season, other and narrower views 
have prevailed. The empirical philosophy, recognising 
experience as the only valid basis of action, seeks to 
limit the realities of knowledge to impressions and ideas; 
impressions being the fleeting, single contacts upon our 
senses of the separate phenomena of nature ; ideas being 
the more or less clear remembrance of those impressions ; 
and self being, not a single thing, but an infinite suc- 
cession of impressions and of memories of those im- 
pressions. But if phenomena be all that man can know, 
it were vain, upon such a theory of knowledge, to seek a 
First Cause; vain even to consider cause as a reality. 
Causation, time, space, self, become fictions. Man must 
dismiss the disquieting dream of sounding the depths of 
philosophical problems ; he must be content with observing, 
recording, and classifying the phenomena that every instant 
are impressing themselves upon that body of associated 
ideas which he calls himself. Under such a theory of 
existence the goal of knowledge becomes the world of 
phenomena in which we live, and the chief end of man 

1 Cf. Edward Caied, op. cit.. Vol. I, Lecture VI. 



38 Barrows Lectures 

is to catalogue facts, to compute the totals of experi- 
ence, to heap up cognitions of individual existence, and 
to transmit the record of these impressions to those who, 
coming after him, must tread the paths that he has 
trodden, and prolong the weary pilgrimage through the 
desert of materialism. 

He who desires to understand the Christian religion 
must realise that its fundamental postulate is the existence 
of a God who can be known; its crowning aspiration is 
to know that God aright. The chief end of Christianity 
is the knowledge of the Infinite One. ' ' This is life eternal, " 
says Christ, "that they might know Thee the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."^ Knowledge 
is the master-key that unlocks the mysteries of Chris- 
tianity ; the corner-stone on which the structure rests ; the 
word that explains why Christianity exists. Christianity 
is not a school hedged about with technicality, for the 
study of abstruse theory and the subtle rivalry of dialectic ; 
it is not a temple, fulfilling itself in its altar, its priesthood, 
and its ritual. Christianity is a path, open to the sky, the 
sunlight, and the wind of God's ungrudging love; free 
and unfenced that all may walk therein; a path that 
broadens as it climbs the mountain-side of truth ; a path 
whose goal is the highest knowledge, even the knowledge 
of the Infinite One, in whom, and of whom, and by whom 
are all things. 

I say this with a greater joy, because I believe that the 
same statement may be made concerning the highest goal 
of Hindu religious aspiration; and I welcome every 
point where cross the paths of earth's seekers after 
God. Are not these the words of Sankara in the intro- 
duction to his commentary on the Vedeinta Sutras : 

1 St. John 17: 3. 



The Christian Idea of God 39 

"The enquiry into Brahma has for its fruit eternal 
bliss; the highest aim of man is realised by the knowl- 
edge of the Brahma. The complete comprehension of 
Brahma is the highest end of man" ?^ Is it not also said 
in one of the Upanishads: "He who knows Brahma 
attains the highest" ?^ No intelligent mind, much more, 
no heart possessing the spirit of brotherhood, can be un- 
moved by this coincidence of view between the concep- 
tion of a knowable Brahma proclaimed in the venerable 
Upanishads, and the harmonious voice of one of the 
greatest of the western religious teachers, himself now 
passed into the vision of the Infinite: "Reason, fol- 
lowing in the wake of faith, grasps the great conception 
that the religious life is a life at once human and Divine — 
the conception that God is a self -revealing God; that the 
Infinite does not annul, but realises, Himself in the finite, 
and that the highest revelation of God is the life of God 
in the soul of man ; and, on the other hand, that the finite 
rests on, and realises itself in, the Infinite ; and that it is 
not the annihilation, but the realisation of our highest 
freedom, in every movement of our thought, in every pul- 
sation of our will, to be the organ and expression of the 
mind and will of God."' 

For those who hold in common that the Infinite One 
is knowable, and that the goal of religion is approached 
through the perfecting of that knowledge, a calm exami- 
nation of Christianity is possible even though it should 
disclose philosophical and practical conclusions far re- 
moved from those of Hinduism. And if, as I proceed, 
that divergence shall appear more evident and more 
extensive, I may trust you still to follow the course of my 

lAdhyayay I, Pada, I. 2 Taittiriydka-upanishad; II, valli; 1, anuvaka. 

3 J. Caird, The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity, Vol. I, p. 54. 



40 Barrows Lectures 

observations in the same spirit of love in which I shall 
utter them. If I have described Christianity as a path, 
broad and unfenced, free to all men, winding up the 
mountain-side of truth, may I not ask that we all, of 
whatsoever faith here present, walk together in friendly 
converse on that unfenced path for a while, even though 
you be constrained to turn back at the last ? It is through 
such fellowship that the hearts of men are knit together, 
even while their minds may fail to attain intellectual con- 
sensus. 

To say that the chief end of Christianity is knowledge 
of the Infinite One is to state the fundamental postulate 
of that religion in the interpretation of which I am now 
engaged. But such a statement of the chief end of Chris- 
tianity must be defined farther before it can gain the form 
and colour and content that belong to the essential nature 
of Christian theism. One cannot understand what a 
Christian means by knowing God until the two ideas, God 
and human personality, are defined in the terms of Chris- 
tian belief. 

There are modes of interpreting the concepts God and 
human personality dissimilar in themselves and leading 
to conclusions variant, if not mutually incompatible. In 
illustration of this statement I shall indicate certain 
methods of interpreting the idea of God, and I shall 
attempt to point out the particulars in which apparently 
they fail, by important omissions, to present the fullness 
of content offered in that method of interpretation which 
is characteristic of Christianity. 

The deistic or transcendent method of interpreting 
the idea of God shall engage our attention first. One 
problem of all monotheistic systems of belief is so to 
state the doctrine of God that justice shall be done, on 



The Christian Idea of God 41 

the one hand, to the conception of an Infinite Deity 
and on the other hand, to the reality of the world/ A 
pantheistic system escapes this problem by denying the 
reality of the world or by merging the world in the 
Infinite. Deism, instead of obliterating the distinction 
between God and the world accentuates it. It represents 
God to be an objective Person living apart from His world, 
transcending it and interested in it as the maker of a 
machine is interested in the fruit of his genius, or as a 
king is interested in governing his subjects. This 
involves a dualistic theory of the universe. On the one 
hand is God the Ruler, the King, the Mover of the world, 
seated as it were upon His throne. On the other hand, 
separate from God as the painting is separate from the 
artist, as the statue is separate from the sculptor, as the 
man in the street is separate from the king in the palace, 
is the vast system of nature. In the midst of the system 
of nature is man with his equipment of physical and 
intellectual powers, his freedom of choice, his distinct, 
inviolable individuality. 

It is not difficult to see that such a method of inter- 
preting the idea of God would have, for a certain class of 
minds, a desirable simplicity. The traditions of the 
human race have brought down to us from an immemorial 
past the conception of sovereignty expressed through a 
royal person elevated above his subjects by superior rank ; 
separated from them by seclusion and the prerogative of 
the throne; demanding and receiving homage; swaying 
the destinies of millions. No tradition is more universal 
than the tradition of monarchy. Crowns, sceptres, palaces, 
are symbols that need no interpretation the world over. 
It is natural that ideas begotten of the tradition of royalty 

1 Cf. J. Caikd, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 114. 



42 Barrows Lectures 

should project themselves into the region of religious 
thought, and dominate the conception of God. The effect 
of those ideas upon a religious system is obvious. God 
becomes a name for a colossal King-Emperor whose palace 
is the heaven of heavens. There he lives in the seclusion 
of royalty ; removed by resources of power from the frailty 
of human life. The world, created at the beginning by 
his command, survives only at his pleasure, and is like a 
trampled plain whereon the myriads of mankind appear, 
live their lives of struggle and sorrow, die, and pass to 
judgment amidst the shadows of the unknown. 

The limitations of time forbid me to dwell upon the 
effects of this conception of God upon the religious life 
of man. The practical effects have been variable. Some- 
times those who have held the extreme view of the tran- 
scendence of God have suffered the extinction of the 
religious life. God being separated from the world, the 
individual man became a fatalist coerced by the machinery 
of the natural order. Sometimes the effect of this concep- 
tion of God has been a religious life of melancholy self- 
adjustment to the edicts of an absolute, unsympathetic 
ruler; together with a stern delight in self-torturing 
renunciation of a world conceived of as without God. 

But, at the moment, we are more interested in the 
philosophical bearings of this idea of God, as separated 
by transcendence from the visible universe, than in its 
practical effects upon the religious life. I beg therefore 
to point out a reason why Christianity is unable to con- 
tent itself with this view of God. Its fundamental fault 
is that it undertakes to draw a line separating what it con- 
ceives of as two independent realities: on the one hand, 
the reality of the finite ; on the other hand, the reality of 
the infinite. On one side of the line it places a reality 



The Christian Idea of God 43 

which it conceives of as Not-God. The content of this 
reality is man — his thoughts, his powers, his whole per- 
sonality, together with the innumerable separate objects 
and existences by which he is surrounded and which make 
up the world; this it calls the finite. On the other 
side of the line, separated from the finite, is a reality 
which it calls God, a Being complete in his own equip- 
ment of powers and qualities, who from an exalted station 
looks and acts upon the finite, and to whom the finite 
looks as to an existence altogether separate from itself. 
It is impossible for Christianity to be satisfied with this 
conception of God. It is a denial of the idea of infinity 
to set off from it by lines and bounds a region of in- 
dependent existence which we call finite and to which we 
attribute a separate life, having equal reality with the life 
of the infinite, yet distinct from it. Such a separation is 
to limit infinity, which is a contradiction in terms; infinity 
being the unlimited. Christianity cannot lend itself to 
such confusion. 

But I shall be asked : Has not Christianity already lent 
itself to this confusion? Is not the phraseology of the 
Bible essentially dualistic, presenting to the mind a view 
of God as sovereign Euler, dwelling in the heavens, look- 
ing down upon man, and approached by man with a 
system of sacrifices and with forms of worship which at 
every point assume the reality of the finite as separate 
from the reality of the Infinite? With perfect frankness 
would I reply : It is true that the Hebrew Scriptures, intent 
on the development of the monotheistic conception, con- 
stantly present God in terms of transcendence, speaking 
of Him as the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity ; 
whose pavilion is in the clouds, whose attitude toward 
man is that of the sovereign Ruler and Lawgiver. It is 



44 Barrows Lectures 

true that the sanctuary of Israel had its Holy of Holies 
upon which this transcendent God was understood locally 
to manifest Himself in the cloud of glory. It is true 
that the ordinary language of Christian teaching and 
Christian prayer abounds in imagery and suggestions that 
imply a view of God as wholly transcendent; and it is 
true that the philosophy of the Christian religion ex- 
hibits stages of development wherein the separateness of 
human personality is accentuated in terms that may be 
interpreted as dualistic. But no Oriental should be 
betrayed into the error of interpreting the popular usages 
of Christian speech, wherein the finite continually is dis- 
tinguished from the Infinite, as the endorsement of a 
philosophy that would shut God away from His world, and 
out of the lives of His children; that would make Him 
but an exaggerated and colossal representation of man; 
usurping the title, while lacking the essence, of the In- 
finite. It will appear, as we proceed, that while in the 
transcendence of God Christianity discerns a truth that 
must be conserved, a truth that deepens reverence and 
quickens worship, and that contributes an important ele- 
ment to the all-inclusive idea of the Infinite; yet the in- 
terpretation of that truth in terms that would set off the 
world from God as a region outside of and apart from 
His infinity is as repugnant to the Christian as it is to the 
pantheist. 

We have viewed the theory of transcendence as an 
attempt to realise the Infinite by emphasising the differ- 
ence in quality between finite and infinite, and by clothing 
the idea of God with associations derived from earthly 
conceptions of authority, royalty, and rank, that result in 
anthropomorphism; which is making a God who is but a 
magnified man. 



The Christian Idea of God 45 

From this we turn to another line along which man has 
sought to find his way to a satisfactory idea of the supreme 
Self ; the reverse of that which seeks to describe, in terms 
borrowed from earthly relations, the nature and the 
attributes of God. It is the method of negation, seek- 
ing an undefinable Infinite through the elimination of 
those qualities and attributes that are suggested to man 
by his own self-consciousness. The objective point in the 
method of negation is the abstraction from the idea of 
God of all attributes, all qualities, all differences, until 
nothing is left for the mind to contemplate but pure being, 
without definition — the undefinable Absolute. This In- 
finite is without qualities; attributes or qualities con- 
ceived in connection with it are to be denied. We 
know only what it is not; and that unknowable resultant 
which remains after all that it is not has been stripped 
off, is the one, the only, the eternal Reality; the supreme 
Self, the illimitable Essence. In saying this I am not 
forgetting that it is not inconsistent with pantheistic 
doctrine so far to qualify the supreme Existence as to 
attribute to it intelligence (as opposed to that dullness or 
blindness which belongs to finite existence) and blessedness 
or joy (as opposed to all possible suffering). I recognise 
that these discriminations are made, and made with in- 
creased emphasis, by certain Indian thinkers of our time; 
yet, in the very making of them, the genius of the purest 
pantheism retains the concept of motionless, formless being 
as the essence of the unqualified Absolute. 

It is not difficult to understand the charm exercised by 
this philosophy of the Infinite over some of the purest 
and profoundest natures that have adorned the annals of 
thought, in Asia and in Europe. There is in it the promise 



46 Barrows Lectures 

of a way of escape from the clash of incidents, struggling 
of lives, and conflict of interests that make the bewilder- 
ment and the weariness of earthly existence. There is in 
it the solace of an infinite calm existing in the solemn 
depths of being, far beneath the storm and stress of 
superficial things ; the pledge of release from the exhaust- 
ing pursuits and competitions that fret the lives of mortals, 
haunting them with baseless hopes, tormenting them with 
illusory desires. There is in it the repose of the Absolute, 
the Undefined, the Unconditioned, standing over against 
the turmoil of a vain world as the cool glades of the 
primeval forest call one away from the parched and arid 
plain. 

For herein, I suppose, is the essential power and charm 
of pantheism; not, as some hastily have judged, in that it 
deifies nature, making every power of the physical world 
and every human life a manifestation of the Divine, but 
in the far deeper thought that it undermines and dissipates 
the reality of all that is finite ; that it solves life's problems, 
obliterates life's errours, relieves life's burdens, assuages 
life's sorrows, quiets life's craving with one great word — 
illusion. It is a striking evidence of the correspondence 
of pantheism with a certain element in man's nature that 
is found in the common life of humanity beneath all race- 
differences, that long before the Indian philosophy was 
known in Europe there were pure and gifted spirits who, 
like Spinoza, were working along the lines of the loftiest 
pantheism to undermine the reality of the finite and to 
give the weary soul of man relief from its burden through 
a doctrine of illusion. That effort, whether pursued in the 
East or in the West, never can be spoken of save with 
reverence by those who are disenthralled from religious 
prejudice and whose hearts are full of love. For, in its 



The Christian Idea of God 47 

two characteristic endeavours, the approach to the Infinite 
by the way of negation and the. solution of the problem 
of phenomenal being by the principle of illusion, are 
suggestions of the highest moral value. I would deal 
with these two characteristic notes of pantheism in a 
reverent and appreciative spirit. Time forbids me to 
discriminate between the pantheism of Spinoza, that rare 
fruit of the Semitic stock, and the pantheism of the Aryan 
schools of Hindustan. But, assuming that discrimination, 
which an ampler treatment of this theme would involve, I 
note with admiration the philosophical idealism that seeks 
to find the Infinite by the path of negation. The scale 
of such thinking is vast, elemental, heroic. It emanates 
from a sense of the Divine Immensity. It is the expression 
of that infinity in man which makes him capable of 
conceiving that which cannot be described or bounded. 
It is a perpetual protest against all petty conceptions of 
God that would make Him even such an one as ourselves. 
It is the triumph of that subtle sense of proportion which 
conceives the supreme Self as greater than any account of 
Him that can be given by the mind of man. It is that 
insistent aspiration of the soul which, seeking one symbol 
of expression after another, that it may define the nature 
of God, finds them all inadequate, casts them all aside, 
and soars upward, as on the pinions of eagles, into the 
unconfined, eternal essence of pure Being. In every age 
the most exalted souls thus have approached God by rising 
above the symbols of God. Is it not this impulse, which 
also moves in the purest pantheism, that throbs in the soul 
of the Hebrew prophet as he cries: "Who hath directed 
the Spirit of the Lord, or, being His counsellor, hath 
taught Him? With whom took He counsel, and who 
instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of judgment? 



48 ' Barrows Lectures 

To whom will ye liken God, or what likeness will ye 
compare unto Him? The graven image? A workman 
melteth it, and the goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold, 
and casteth for it silver chains. He that is too impoverished 
for such an oblation chooseth a tree that will not rot, he 
seeketh unto him a cunning workman to set up a graven 
image that shall not be moved. Have ye not known? 
Have ye not heard ? Hath it not been told you from the 
beginning ? Have ye not understood from the foundations 
of the earth ? It is He that sitteth on the circle of the 
earth and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers : To 
whom then will ye liken Me, or shall I be equal? saith 
the Holy one!"' 

Not less impressive than this approach to the Infinite 
by the way of negation is that companion note of the 
purest pantheism, the resolution of all phenomena, all 
cognitions, all volitions, all individualising bodily organs 
and mental functions, into one vast illusion, one all- 
embracing unreality.^ At the foundation of this doctrine of 
illusion, unless I quite misapprehend its scope, lies the 
same heroic conception of the supreme Self to which 
already I have referred. That supreme Self is conceived 
as the only Reality. The innumerable differences and 
subdivisions of human life and the phenomenal world ; the 
individual wills, emotions, cognitions of men; the forces 
and appearances of the visible universe, were they real, 
would be limitations placed upon the absoluteness of the 
highest Self. Therefore they cannot be real in themselves. 
They are but the mysterious cloud of illusion that envelopes 
the one Reality ; the hindering web through which at last 
the enlightened soul shall break from the thralldom of 

1 Cf. Isaiah 40 : 13-25. 

2TRIPATHI, Sketch of the Vedanta Philosophy, passim; also Thibaut, The 
Veddnta-Satras ("Sacred Books of the East," Vol. XXXIV, Introduction), p. 34. 



The Christian Idea of God 49 

merit and demerit, desire, struggle, pleasure, sorrow, toil, 
attainment, failure, into knowledge, the knowledge that its 
selfhood is one with that highest Self. It is a thought 
that has visited many a seeker after rest whose philosophy 
was by no means pantheistic — a thought that breathes 
the very deepest yearning of the soul. For who is there 
among the noble souls of the ages that has not longed "to 
escape from the unrest and dissatisfaction which the 
ordinary desires and passions engender, and to find some 
object in union with which the soul would attain to a 
perfect and abiding rest"?^ Who is there that hungers 
not for absolute reality, as the ordinary objects of human 
desire are proved by experience to be "illusory and 
deceptive, filling the soul with vain hopes, and, in the very 
moment of attainment, vanishing from the hand that 
seemed to grasp them"?^ Is it not this sense of the 
exhausting confusion of the phenomenal world as contrasted 
with the peace of the infinite Reality that impels the 
Psalmist to cry: "Fearfulness and trembling are come 
upon me, and I said: Oh! that I had wings like a dove, 
for then would I fly away and be at rest"?^ Is it not 
this sense of an unseen Reality abiding forever beneath 
the incessant transitions of the phenomenal present that 
leads the Apostle to say, as one who detects life's illusion 
and pierces the veils of the unreal : "For our light affliction 
which is for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory ; while we look not at the 
things which are seen but the things which are not seen ; 
for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things 
which are not seen are eternal" ?* 

Christianity, while it views with respect the mental 

1 Cf. J. Caibd, Fundamentals of Christianity, Vol. I, p. 99. 
Ubid., p. 100. 3 Ps. 55 : 6. 4 2 Cor. 4 : 17, 18. 



50 Barrows Lectures 

processes that approach the idea of an Infinite God by the 
path of negation, and that solve the mystery of the phe- 
nomenal world by a doctrine of illusion, does not arrive at 
the conclusions that produce a pantheistic philosophy. 
Inasmuch as the distinctive beliefs of Christianity can be 
understood and their religious values can be estimated 
only in the light of their philosophical antecedents, I shall 
suggest certain grounds upon which Christianity must be 
differentiated from all pantheistic systems. 

It will be sufficient for my purpose to indicate two 
such grounds. 

Christianity stands apart from pantheism in its method 
of reaching a conception of the Infinite One and in its esti- 
mate of human personality. 

I have pointed out that, in the purest and highest type 
of pantheism, approach to the idea of an Infinite One is 
made by the path of negation, by stripping off and casting 
away all qualifying terms, attributes, distinctions, rela- 
tions, until the process of elimination is complete and there 
remains only a Unit of Being — separated from all differ- 
ences — the absolute simplicity of being. That is con- 
ceived as the highest Self, the ultimate Reality, which, 
having the least content, comes nearest to the truth of 
things.^ The Christian seeker after Grod is unwilling to 
stop at this conclusion of the process of negation. Still 
pressing forward he advances into the path of affirmation. 
He seeks to know not merely what God is not, but chiefly 
what He is. He conceives of that infinite One, not as 
withdrawing Himself from the individualistic distinctions 
of the universe and retiring into the inconceivableness of 
pure being without attributes or qualities, but rather as 
filling the universe with His fullness, and as realising 

1 Cf. Edwabd Caied, Evolution of Religion, Vol. I, p. 146. 



The Christian Idea of God 51 

Himself through and in the infinite varieties that crowd 
the universe with life. 

I shall speak presently of what God is to the Christian ; 
but at this moment I am seeking only to set forth the 
distinction between the method of pantheism and the 
method of Christianity in arriving at the idea of God. 
The one aspires toward an ideal of vague simplicity, 
eluding description and analysis; the other reaches forth 
to an ideal of infinite completeness, of inexhaustible wealth 
of qualities, attributes, and modes of being ; the fullness of 
Him that filleth all in all. In the delight with which 
Christianity pursues this method of realising God, finding 
in Him the attributes of an infinitely beautiful Person- 
ality, it seems to represent that which is normal in human 
experience. When I reflect that the pure classic panthe- 
ism of the highest Indian thought coexists with an elabo- 
rate polytheism, I cannot but be confirmed in the opinion 
that the nature of man craves as an object of worship, and 
as a source of spiritual help, that with which, theoretically 
at least, it can associate personality. I desire to be under- 
stood as referring in a respectful spirit to Hindu deities, 
and as recognising that, in the higher theological systems of 
Hinduism, those deities are regarded as modes of the self- 
manifestation of the one, supreme, unqualified Brahma. 
Nevertheless, that they should assume the importance 
accorded to them in the religious life of the people, and 
that in the philosophy of Hinduism there should be schools 
affirming the personality of Deity, seems to show that the 
deepest hunger in the soul of man is for a God that can 
be conceived in terms of personality. Still more am I 
confirmed in this opinion on observing how, among thinkers 
of the West, some who were advocates of the most abstract 
pantheism came at length to clothe that abstraction with the 



52 Barrows Lectures 

attributes of personality. Spinoza, to whom already I 
have referred, asserted at the end of his speculations what 
he had denied at the beginning. In his philosophy "the 
indeterminate infinite, which is the negation of the finite, 
becomes the infinite which necessarily expresses itself in 
the finite ; the all-absorbing, lifeless substance becomes 
the God who knows and loves Himself and man with an 
infinite intellectual love."^ 

Christianity also stands apart from pantheism in its 
estimate of human personality. The lofty monistic ideal- 
ism of the Vedanta teaches the unreality of personal dis- 
tinctions and the illusory nature of personal experience. 
The phenomenal world, or world of ordinary experience, 
consists of a number of souls engaged in specific cogni- 
tions and volitions, and of the objects of those cognitions 
and volitions: both the cognitions and the objects are 
alike unreal. The non-enlightened soul is unable to look 
beyond the veil of illusion, and so instead of recognising 
itself to be Brahma it blindly identifies itself with these 
illusive cognitions and seeks its true self in them; in per- 
sonal experience thus limiting itself in knowledge and 
intelligence, and burdening itself with merit and demerit, 
not knowing that the only escape is through knowledge — 
knowledge that there is no difference between its true self 
and the absolute Brahma.^ It is impossible not to be 
impressed with the sublimity of this conception of person- 
ality; yet to the Christian it is far from exhausting the 
sublimity of all that is conveyed to the mind in the con- 
cept, a human soul ! For, from the point of view of 
Christianity, the individuality of God carries with it as a 
logical necessity the individuality of man. If God be, as 

1 Spinoza, Philosophical Classics, p. 303. 

2 Cf. Teipathi and Thibaut, in loc. 



The Christian Idea of God 53 

Christianity conceives Him to be, not an "abstract, self- 
identical, self-sufficing Infinite," not formless being, with- 
out quality or attribute, but Life in the utmost wealth of 
attributes, in the opulence of self-consciousness, in the 
infinitude of self-expression — if this be God (and this 
Christianity believes God to be), then the self -completing 
of His personality involves its expression in the terms of 
finite intelligences, corresponding with His own intelli- 
gence because proceeding from it and existing only in and 
through His own existence. 

In my next lecture I shall speak of the Christian idea 
of the Trinity as founded in the psychological necessity 
that the Absolute Being, in order to the completing of His 
own Selfhood shall express Himself as well as know Him- 
self. But for the present I confine myself to the relation 
of this principle to human intelligences. It is fundamental 
to pantheism in its noble purpose to glorify the Infinite, 
that it shall deny the separate existence of finite souls, on the 
ground that to admit it would be to limit the infiniteness of 
Brahma; and therefore the apparent separateness of the 
finite soul must be regarded as illusion, escape from which 
is possible only by denying individuation and by identi- 
fying the apparent individual with the very substance of 
God. Christianity, having the same noble purpose to 
glorify the Infinite, affirms that the completeness of that 
Infinite is impossible except through the existence of 
finite intelligences; that, if there be no individual souls 
with whom God can be in relation and through whom God 
can realise certain aspects of His own personality, then 
God is limited, not alone in our thought of Him, but in 
the actuality of His being. For, evidently, God, on any 
theory of His existence, must be all-complete, containing 
in Himself all possibilities of self-realisation. But there 



54 Barrows Lectures 

are vast ranges of self-realisation that are conditioned 
upon the existence of corresponding intelligences, endowed 
with freedom and capable of experience. Without the 
existence of these intelligences the supreme Mind is shut 
out from the perfect knowledge of its own qualities. 
Man, therefore, in the philosophical system of Christianity, 
is neither an illusion, beneath which lies the silent, self- 
contained essence of God, nor is he a monstrous after- 
thought, projected into time, limiting by his abnormal 
independence the theoretical infiniteness of Him who is 
supposed to be all in all. Man is God's fulfilment of 
Himself; man exists that God may be God in the perfec- 
tion of His self-realisation along all those lines upon 
which Spirit holds relation with spirit. 

But God can find no self-fulfilment through the exist- 
ence of man, unless man's existence be as real as His 
own — yes, unless a man's life be a very extension and re- 
production of His own. To give man an unreal and illusory 
semblance of freedom, with phantasmal endowments of will 
and conscience, would be to leave God self -limited. God 
must, as it were, reproduce Himself in man — giving him 
a freedom which is God's freedom, a will which is God's 
will, a conscience which is God's conscience; so that man 
shall be a differentiated emanation from God. This is the 
most ancient tradition of Christianity, emerging from that 
undated dawn of thought which is alike pre- Semitic and 
pre-Aryan: man made in the image of the Eternal, 
whereby man becomes a living soul, an essential self- 
fulfilment of God.^ So Christianity accounts for human 
personality, not by the principle of illusion, for man is 
real in his individuation, a necessary reality, else were not 
God perfectly self -expressed; and not by the principle of 

1 Genesis 1:26, 27; 2:7. 



The Christian Idea of God 55 

dualism, making man distinct from God, living in a region 
of self -determining life from which, by an incredible 
inconsistency, the Infinite, who filleth all things, is ex- 
cluded. Man exists only because God exists, and God's 
life completes itself in man's life; and every individual is 
a differentiation of the all-inclusive Life in which it lives 
and moves and has its being. The freedom of God is in 
the individual ; and the possession of that freedom, which, 
in the nature of the case, is essential not only to the 
reality of the individual, but to the self-realisation of God, 
is the source of moral independence and the ground of 
moral responsibility. 

The message of Christianity to the individual may be 
stated in the words of another concerning individuality 
and freedom: "You are at once an expression of the 
Divine will, and by virtue of that very fact, the expression 
here and now, in your life, of your own will, precisely in 
so far as you find yourself acting with a definite intent, 
and gaining through your act a definite empirical expres- 
sion. We do not say. Your individuality causes your act, 
We do not say. Your free will creates your life. For 
being is everywhere deeper than causation. What you 
are is deeper than your mere power as a physical agent. 
Nothing whatever besides yourself determines just what 
constitutes your individuality, for you are just this unique 
and elsewhere unexampled expression of the Divine mean- 
ing. And here and now your individuality in your act is 
your freedom. Thus your freedom is your unique pos- 
session. Nowhere else in the universe is there what here 
expresses itself in your conscious being. And this is true 
of you, not in spite of the unity of the Divine conscious- 
ness, but just because of the very uniqueness of the whole 
Divine life. For all is Divine, all expresses meaning. All 



56 Barrows Lectures 

meaning is uniquely expressed. Nothing is vainly re- 
peated ; you, too, then, as individual are unique. And 
(here is the central fact) just in so far as you consciously 
will and choose, you then and there in so far know what 
this unique meaning of your individuality is. Therefore 
are you in action free and individual, just because the 
unity of the Divine Life, when taken together with the 
uniqueness of this life, implies in every finite being just 
such essential originality of meaning as that of which you 
are conscious. Arise then, freeman, stand forth in thy 
world. It is Grod's world. It is also thine." ^ 

I have ventured to assert that the distinctive beliefs of 
Christianity can be understood and their religious values 
can be estimated only in the light of their philosophical 
antecedents. And I have attempted to show that Christi- 
anity, while appreciating the contributions of pantheism 
to religious thought, stands apart from pantheistic sys- 
tems in its method of reaching a conception of the Infinite 
and in its estimate of human personality. Its idea of God is 
comprehensive rather than eliminative. It does not regard 
simplicity of being as the highest type of existence. It 
does not identify God with that formless essence which, 
devoid of attributes and difPerentiations, may be supposed 
to exist, prior to self- realising activity, in the serenity of 
the untroubled Thought. It fills its idea of God with 
the wealth of complex, manifold, self -realising life; life 
that is perfect because all-embracing, self -expressive, per- 
sonal. 

It sees in human personality the finite correspondence 
for this infinite Life ; God realising Himself in man ; man 
unthinkable without God; the unique expression of the 
Divine will, and, by virtue thereof, free, with the freedom 

1 JosiAH EOYCE, The World and the Individual, p. 469. 



The Christian Idea of God 57 

of God, in the inalienable rights, responsibilities, and 
realities of personal existence. I do not make these 
statements as one imparting to his auditors that with 
which previously they were unacquainted; for I speak to 
many who long have been familiar with the Christian 
point of view and to whom it has been a subject of profound 
study. Nor do I speak as if these views of God and the 
individual had no counterparts in Eastern thought; for 
among the religious thinkers of India are many who, while 
manifesting no approval of Christianity, are steadfast in 
these two fundamental beliefs of Christianity — the 
personality of God, the reality of the human soul. 

My purpose in these foregoing affirmations has been 
to establish a basis upon which to estimate the religious 
value of the distinctive beliefs of Christianity. By this 
term I intend to indicate subjective value — value for the 
individual, realised by him through experience. These 
terms, "value" and "experience," simple in themselves, 
call for definition when employed in a religious connection 
before an audience of oriental minds. 

Value may be objective and absolute, or subjective 
and relative. Under a government adopting a gold 
standard, a coin issued by the realm is understood to have 
an absolute value. It stands for so much ; no more, no less. 
That absolute value is not affected by the sentiment or the 
condition of him who uses the coin. Whereas relatively 
the single gold coin may appear to have a far greater value 
for him who is in need than for him who is in affluence, 
absolutely the value is fixed and cannot be diminished or 
increased. 

But who has not possessed some precious keepsake that 
came from a beloved one? It might be a book inscribed 
by a dear hand long resting in death. It might be a 



58 Barrows Lectures 

flower held and breathed on by one whose radiant 
countenance has vanished forever. What is its value? 
To a stranger, nothing ; it is a thing to be set aside and 
forgotten. To you, who see in it the pledge and sacrament 
of undying love, and unto whom it is as the "touch of a 
vanished hand," its value is above rubies. Such value is 
subjective and relative, determined by that which is within 
yourself: memory, affection, sorrow. 

It is altogether in this latter sense, subjective and 
relative, that I shall speak of the religious value of 
Christian ideas. It is the only practical sense in which 
the term can be applied, in the present stage of our 
discussion. I may, indeed, be convinced that these ideas 
have an absolute value which is objective, in themselves, 
and equal for all men. I may give reasons for that 
conviction, and may attempt to bring others into con- 
currence with it. But that attempt, however earnestly 
made, must lack the kind of authority with which I am 
able to speak of the subjective value of these ideas for 
one who has incorporated them in his own life. What is 
the nature of the authority which enables me to speak 
with assurance of the subjective value of the religious 
ideas of Christianity, that is, their value for the individual? 
Manifestly the only authority I can claim is the authority 
of experience; primarily my own experience, as that to 
which I have immediate access; secondarily, and by way 
of corroborative testimony, the experience of many other 
persons, reported to me and coinciding with my own. 

What is experience? Considered merely as a word in 
the vocabulary of language, experience is the action of 
putting to the test; it is an operation performed in order 
to ascertain or illustrate some truth ; it is, then, the fact 
of being consciously the subject of a state or condition ; it 



The Christian Idea of God 59 

is, finally, knowledge resulting from what one has under- 
gone.* Concerning the truth of these definitions from a 
literary point of view, probably there will be no discussion. 
But when, not seeking a literary definition, but a philo- 
sophical analysis, I ask, "What is experience?" imme- 
diately I am furnished with two replies which appear to 
be mutually contradictory, if not mutually destructive. I 
shall be told by some: Experience is illusion; it is the 
veil that enwraps and impedes the unenlightened soul, 
keeping it from the knowledge of its highest self. I 
shall be told that the emotions, conceptions, beliefs, 
purporting to be communicated to the soul by the ideas 
of the Christian religion, are shadows cast by shadows. I 
shall be reminded that the recognition of experience is a 
stumbling-block in the soul's progress toward release, and 
that the path of wisdom leads away from the low and fog- 
bound levels of experience to those heights where the 
individual self is taken into the absolute Self as the view- 
less air that sweeps up the mountain-pass is lost, yet never 
lost, in the infinite etherial atmosphere. 

But, on the other hand, I shall be told: "Experience 
is real for a self-conscious individual." "A will, concretely 
embodied in a life, is reality. The self-conscious Absolute 
which we call God is the ultimate Reality. He embodies 
one will and realises this will in the unity of His own life. 
And every finite, self-conscious individual is real up to his 
limit and in his own measure free, and no other finite 
individual could take his place, share his self -consciousness, 
or accomplish his ideal." ^ By finite experience we mean 
that this self-conscious individual sees, observes, knows, 
lives. This is his realm of experience, and it is real. I 

1 Cf. Murray's Dictionary, in loc. 

^Cf. KoYCE, The World and the Individual, pp. 359-66; The Conception of 
Qod, p. 272. 



60 Barrows Lectures 

am glad to feel that there are many in India, who, while 
not accepting Christianity in its theological conclusions, 
concur in its assertion of the reality of personal experience. 

Whatever results may issue from a philosophical analy- 
sis of experience, touching its reality or its unreality, there 
is, surely, a ground upon which all thinking persons 
stand together. That ground is: the reality of a self in 
man. Whatever that self may be, whether God, or Brahma, 
or man made in God's image and endowed with self -deter- 
mining powers, the existence of that self cannot be 
denied. *'He who denies it would himself be that self 
which he denies. No self can deny itself."^ The exist- 
ence of a self in man is personal identity. "My personal 
identity," says one who thought deeply on these matters, 
" implies the continued existence of that indivisible thing 
which I call myself. Whatever this self may be, it is 
something which thinks and deliberates and resolves and 
acts and suffers. I am not thought, I am not action, I 
am not feeling ; I am something that thinks, and acts, and 
suffers. My thoughts, and actions, and feelings change 
every moment ; they have no continued, but a successive, 
existence ; but that self or I, to which they belong, is per- 
manent, and has the same relation to all the succeeding 
thoughts, actions, and feelings, which I call mine. The 
proper evidence I have of all this is remembrance."^ 

Experience, from the point of view of these lectures, is 
the totality of what that undeniable self in a man thinks, 
does, and suffers. It is not necessary to determine whether 
that is reality or unreality. We may retain our different 
convictions on that point. But we know that in a sense, 
whether it be real or whether it be illusion, experience is 

1 Max Mt^LiLEB, Theosophy or Psychological Religion^ p. 304. 
2REID, Intellectual Powers^ Vol. Ill, chap. 4. 



The Christian Idea of God 61 

something which as men we share. What is this parch- 
ing of the throat, this aching of the head, this shivering 
and burning that racks the frame of the fever-stricken, as 
he tosses on his couch through the hot night, and waits 
for the cool breathing of the dawn? It is experience. 
What is this sense of delight that suffuses eye and brain 
and heart, as the fever-stricken one rises from the bed of 
illness and goes forth into the valleys of nature, where 
flowers are springing and fountains are welling, and 
shadows are tracing arabesques on velvet lawns, and winds 
more gentle than the music of harps are playing celestial 
symphonies through groves of cedar? It is experience. 
What is this horror of great darkness that turns day into 
night, this pitiless pang that pierces to the dividing asun- 
der of soul and spirit, this sorrow that dries up the springs 
of courage and ages the heart between sunrise and sunset, 
when death, mocking at our defences and heedless of our 
fears, enters in to smite the blessed object of our love? 
Nay, what is love, and what is service, and what the pas- 
sionate temptation, and what the moral victory, and what 
the aspiration that rises like a tide within the soul, and 
lifts it, as the ship is lifted on the wave, toward all holy 
perfection, disenthralling knowledge, mystical union with 
the life of God ? It is experience. Call it reality, or if 
your philosophical conviction be so, call it illusion ; but, 
real or illusory, it is that which comes to us; it is that 
which makes us, for better or for worse, the men we are 
in this present world. 

It is with this that I deal : first of all as a man, in lov- 
ing sympathy with all his brother-men; then, as a Chris- 
tian, testifying as one who has seen, albeit dimly, a kindly 
light that is shining for every man that cometh into the 
world ; a gift misused by many that claim to have received 



62 Barrows Lectures 

it, misunderstood by all that have judged it in its weak 
and fallible representatives rather than in its inherent 
merit; a power for inspiration, purification, consolation, 
having promise of the life that now is and of that which 
is to come. 

The term "religious experience" would express the 
sum of effects realised through feeling, conscience, reason, 
and conduct in the self-consciousness of the believer in a 
religion. It is quite unimportant whether philosophy de- 
scribes these effects as real or as illusory. Apparently 
they are realised, and the apparent realisation of them is 
religious experience for each individual who realises them 
for himself. Here again we all stand on common ground, 
whatever our religion. The Mohammedan, the Hindu, 
the Parsi, the Jew, the Christian must have religious expe- 
rience; for that term connotes simply what his religion 
contributes to his own life ; what it means to him ; what it 
gives to him, be it much or little. It is religious experi- 
ence if it satisfies and stimulates and sanctifies him as an 
individual. It is religious experience if it conveys to him 
the realisation of itself as truth, the very truth of God for 
him and for all men. It is no less religious experience if 
it fails to satisfy him; if it beckons him onward only to 
elude him when he seeks to depend upon it ; if it discloses 
weaknesses as he investigates it; if it gives him a stone 
for bread when he turns to it to appease the cravings of his 
spiritual nature. 

*' Christian experience" is a term which describes the 
totality of effects realised through feeling, conscience, 
reason, and conduct in the self -consciousness of one who 
yields himself intellectually, ethically, and spiritually to 
the ideas affirmed in Christianity. Christian experience 
represents the religious value of Christianity for one who 



The Christian Idea of God 63 

believes it ; that value being regarded as subjective or rela- 
tive ; its value to him ; its contribution to the completeness 
of his life in this present world (be this present world real 
or illusory). It stands for the measure in which Chris- 
tianity makes life in this present world more worth living, 
sustaining it with rational consolations, enriching it with 
productive ideas, broadening it with educative convictions, 
equipping it with social adaptations, inspiring it with glori- 
ous hopes. It is not my purpose to offer the Christian 
experience of any individual, for example my own, as ob- 
jective evidence of the truth of Christianity as a religion ; 
for the results derived from experience are evidentially 
conclusive to him alone who possesses the experience ; the 
evidential value for another is strictly relative; in one 
case it may be great, in the other case it may be unim- 
portant. My ultimate purpose shall have been attained 
if a recital of the influences brought to bear upon the 
feeling, conscience, intellect, and conduct of one believer 
in the essential conceptions of Christianity shall lead to a 
clearer apprehension of the religious importance and charm 
of those conceptions, and shall awaken in some thoughtful 
heart a desire to test for itself the alleged power of those 
conceptions to enhance the joy of a man's life in this 
present world, to fortify its moral energy, to augment its 
value as a social force. 

The two foundation principles on which Christianity 
rests its appeal to the individual life are its belief in God 
and its belief in man ; that is to say, it believes in God as 
self-conscious, absolutely self-determining, infinite Per- 
sonality; it believes in man as self-conscious, relatively 
self -determining, finite personality. It relates God to 
man by a method of thought that suffuses like a luminous 
atmosphere every part of the system of Christian belief; 



64 Barrows Lectures 

a method that is a unique blending of three philosophical 
conceptions. Christianity is not satisfied with the dualistic 
doctrine of a transcendent God, which would separate Him 
from the world and, by placing Him on a throne in the 
heavens, would give Him an apparent exaltation, which 
upon reflection is seen to be actual limitation. Yet, out of 
transcendence, Christianity takes up into its idea of God 
an element of essential truth never to be surrendered. 
Nor is it satisfied with the doctrine of an immanent God, 
present in matter and in mind, coextensive with the uni- 
verse; for the immanence that is without transcendence 
may become indistinguishable from a mere property of the 
universe; limiting God in the very act of thought that 
seeks, and intends to affirm, infinity. Yet, out of imma- 
nence Christianity takes up into its idea of God an element 
of essential truth never to be surrendered; a truth that 
fills the whole earth with the fullness of Him that filleth 
all in all. Nor is it satisfied with pure monism — such 
sincere and consistent monism as makes the conservative 
school of the Vedanta pre-eminent in the realm of theistic 
speculation; monism that recognises only Absolute Being 
and denies the reality of all individualistic distinctions. 
For Christianity believes in man as truly as it believes in 
God; in man as the self -fulfilment, not the limitation, of 
God ; in man as possessing that inherent finite self, through 
which and with which the absolute Self finds perfect ex- 
pression; in man as from God and of God, yet separate 
and inviolable in the rights and responsibilities of real, 
finite selfhood. Nevertheless, out of monism, Chris- 
tianity takes up into its idea of God an element of essen- 
tial truth never to be surrendered; an element that has 
interpreted Deity and sanctified humanity.' 

1 Cf. Illingworth, Divine Immanence, pp. 69, 70. 



The Christian Idea of God 65 

Thus does the Christian idea of God gather and assimi- 
late many elements. He is trancendent in that eternal 
Selfhood which is independent of all time and space rela- 
tions; in that Essence which no man hath seen nor can 
see; in the movements of that Mind whose thoughts are 
not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways. He is 
immanent, filling all things with His Spirit, realising 
Himself in His works, living in all that lives. Creation 
is not a finished act of the past, but a continuous process. 
The will of God is the energy of the universe; *' uniform 
and permanent in quantity, yet expressing itself in modes 
of infinite variety."^ He is one with the individual soul 
in an essential monism, for the nature of man is unthink- 
able apart from God, in -whom we live and move and have 
our being; the freedom of man is God's freedom locally 
manifested; the individuality of man subsists in this, that 
each life is a unique expression of the Divine energy. 

The relation of this idea of God to the personal ex- 
perience of one who believes in it is founded upon the 
Christian conception of man as a self-conscious, free, 
responsible being. The idea of God comes to the indi- 
vidual soul of a Christian as an objective force working 
upon it, contributing to its life, influencing feeling, guid- 
ing conscience, suggesting or restraining action ; because 
a Christian thinks of himself as a self -determining per- 
sonality, not as the essence of absolute Being existing 
under the illusion of finite personality. 

For a religion founded on a pure and consistent 
theosophical monism no such experience as Christian 
experience logically is possible. It cannot say: "Because 
God is as He is, therefore I feel these emotions toward 
Him, and am impelled to this renunciation or to that 

I Faxrbaibn, Philosophy of the Christian EeUgion, p. 59. 



66 Barrows Lectures 

act of service." It cannot say: "I love God," or, "I 
serve God," or, "I aspire to be like God," or, "My soul 
is athirst for God." Such language is unintelligible in 
the lips of consistent monism. What it says, if consistent 
with itself, is: "I am God, God is I; and all this con- 
fusion of unbidden feeling, and instinctive aspiration and 
yearning toward God is an entangling shroud of unreality, 
a blinding mist." I do not mean to imply that consistent 
monism is unethical, that it has no place for holy con- 
duct. Far be it from me to utter such folly. The ethical 
qualities of some who have lived on the highest levels 
of monistic speculation are as conspicuous as the snowy 
summits of the Himalayas. I ajfirm simply that the 
ethical element in pure monism differs from the emo- 
tions and volitions of Christian experience in respect of 
several interesting particulars. In stating these I am 
drawing no invidious comparisons ; I am seeking neither 
to be a special pleader for Christianity nor to disparage 
other faiths. I am not here in the temper of a critic. 
My purpose is to analyse Christianity in the presence of 
those who have not adopted it as their own faith. As a 
Christian I am bound to do this. A religion worthy of 
consideration by thoughtful minds should invite the 
closest analysis of its motives. 

I would point out, then, that the ethics of pure monism 
differs from Christian experience in important particulars 
— namely in the nature of its incentive; in the nature of 
its obligations; in the nature of its satisfaction. It differs 
in the nature of its incentive ; the incentive of pure theo- 
sophical monism toward ethical feeling and conduct is 
self -deliverance. "I am God; to abstain from the world 
and its phantasmal entanglements hastens the deliverance 
of that absolute Being which I am, from the bondage of 



The Christian Idea of God 67 

illusive individuality, from the vortex of life." The in- 
centive of Christian experience toward ethical feeling and 
conduct is the Holiness of God; seen, adored, imitated. 
"Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect."^ Here the incentive to holiness is not 
egoistic. It is an objective influence pervading the soul ; 
informing its thought, conforming it to the Divine perfec- 
tion. The incentive is not self -deliverance from phantasmal 
bondage. It is the power of the beatific vision of Divine 
excellence over the reason, the conscience, the emotions, 
and the will of the soul that knows itself, not as God, but 
as the offspring of God, in whom the Eternal Father 
would fulfill Himself, as the earthly parent would fulfill 
himself in his child. 

The ethics of theosophical monism differs from Christian 
experience in the nature of its obligation, or moral impera- 
tive. The world being unreal, and the end of goodness 
being the escape from unreality into absolute Being, 
goodness becomes in the individual a provisional expedient 
to hasten self -deliverance, the value of goodness becomes 
egoistic and relative^ a means to an interested end; and, 
conversely, the significance of non-goodness also is 
egoistic: it retards self-deliverance from the vortex of 
life. The moral obligation recognised in Christian 
experience is founded on the absolute value of goodness 
and the reality of the finite self. "Right is right since 
God is God." The consistent Christian seeks after holy 
thought and conduct because right and wrong are realities 
of a moral universe, and because the will of God is 
righteousness. From this root of thought springs the 
Christian conception of sin, of which I am to speak in 
my fourth lecture. 

1 St. Matthew 5 : 48. 



68 Barrows Lectures 

The ethics of monism differs from Christian experience 
in the character of the satisfaction accompanying right 
conduct. That satisfaction, in the nature of the case, is 
egoistic. *' Since I am God, if I am holy I find satisfaction 
in the promise of self -deliverance, release, emancipation 
from illusion." For a soul of the finest fibre that prospect 
of resolution into absolute Being must be a vision of 
delight. But, in Christian experience, the highest satis- 
faction accompanying holy thought and right conduct is 
the hope, if not the consciousness, of pleasing God ; the 
joy of doing the will of God. If one ask: "Why is there 
joy in doing the will of God?" the reply must involve the 
philosophical basis of Christianity; its doctrine of God 
and its doctrine of man. God is love ; man is an object 
of that love. To do the will of God is to answer love with 
love; and that is joy. 

I shall conclude this lecture, and my argument upon 
this part of my subject, by pointing out certain elements 
in the content of the Christian idea of God, and by show- 
ing their religious value for him who accepts them. That 
conception of absolute Being which is the goal of the 
most consistent theosophical monism is reached by the 
path of negation. In words recently published in India : 
"There truly exists only one universal Being. It is not 
a thinking Being, but pure thought. It is absolutely 
destitute of qualities, whatever qualities or attributes are 
conceivable can only be denied."^ I wish to express 
my sense of the intellectual dignity of motive prompting 
this method of approach to the idea of God. It represents 
a lofty conception of the immensity of absolute Being. 
While it may tolerate polytheism as a needed concession 
to the conventional limitations of human thought ; while 

1 Cf. Teipathi, op. cit. 



The Christian Idea of God 69 

it may welcome symbols as aids to devotion; while it may 
personify powers of nature, and invest those personifications 
with individuality ; its deeper instinct repudiates the claim 
to finality on the part of any of these, presses past them 
and all else that would bind with attributes the Essence of 
the Illimitable; until thought, climbing above all polythe- 
istic distinctions, spurns at length the topmost peak of 
personality, and, spreading its wings, plunges forth into 
the awful void of the unqualified, the impersonal, the 
ultimate abstraction. 

Christianity, climbing the same mountain of approach 
to the idea of God, stops not at negation, but presses on 
to affirmation. Its objective is, not the void of abstract 
Being, but the fullness of perfect Life. To its thinking, 
the simplicity of the pure Abstract is not the highest 
possible conception of infinity. For the pure Abstract is 
without personal relations and so without that entire self- 
realisation which is the measure of complete existence. 
In the primordial forms of organic life, simplicity of 
organisation coexists with sluggish and rudimentary self- 
realisation ; it has few points of contact with other existences. 
In the animal groups, a more complex organisation is 
attended with a higher type of self-realisation and a wider 
range of external relationship. In man, with his mysterious 
psychic forces come yet more marvellous self-realisations 
and differentiated contacts with other existences, which, in 
the highest types of culture, suggest foreshado wings of 
infinity. So, God is the fullness of perfect Life, the 
absolute Self-realisation; which is in relation with all 
other existences, from the lowest to the highest; so that, 
on the one hand, not a sparrow falls to the ground without 
the Heavenly Father, and, on the other hand, not a human 
spirit lives on the heights of intellectual and moral 



70 Barrows Lectures 

greatness, or struggles in the depths of ignorance, pol- 
lution, and woe, unrecognised, unremembered, unloved, 
nnpitiedby that All-knowing, All-sensitive, All-embracing 
Life. 

Approaching the idea of God by this path of affirmation, 
Christianity finds the content of the idea rich beyond 
expression, and, in the elements of that content it finds 
that which reacts upon experience; making life in this 
present world more worth living, enhancing its joys, 
fortifying its moral energy, augmenting its social force. 
To exhibit all the elements realised by Christianity in the 
idea of God, and to show how each of them contributes to 
the value of one's life in this world, would carry me quite 
beyond the time limits of this lecture. I shall merely 
name four of these elements; briefly commenting upon 
the first of them and leaving the others to be developed in 
my next lecture. 

Timelessness, presence, character, and manifestation 
are four elements that enrich the content of the Christian 
idea of God and give it a religious value for the present 
life of each pilgrim through this world. If, as I set forth 
these elements, many who are devout adherents of non- 
Christian faiths feel that I am stating nothing that is not 
fully understood by them already, as being part of their 
belief, part of the solace or the inspiration of their own 
lives, I shall rejoice. For I have no desire to claim for 
Christianity a monopoly of spiritual ideas, or to present 
it as a religion unrelated to the other forms of human 
faith. No belief is more dear to the Christian than that 
of the universal energy of the Spirit of God, and if at 
many points the paths of the seekers after God converge, 
if they who are sundered in respect of some subjects of 
belief are at one in respect of other subjects, these approxi- 



The Christian Idea of God 71 

mations and coincidences bear witness to the universality 
of God ; they prophesy of yet closer approximations for 
all those whom His Spirit leads. 

Timelessness, or freedom from the restrictions imposed 
by time relations, is an element in the idea of God which 
does for Christian experience what the foundation does 
for the house built thereon. As a tent pitched for a 
night, vanishing at sunrise ; a thing without anchorage, 
without local continuance; the prey of the whirlwind, the 
load of the pilgrim — such is human life apart from the 
timelessness of God. No element in our lot is more per- 
plexing than the time relation. Its evanescence ; its pro- 
gression ; its momentum ; its limitations ; its connection with 
misery and happiness; the physical correspondences of 
our being with the time relations of birth, and growth, 
and decay, and death ; the effects of time in the world of 
nature — seedtime and harvest, and summer and winter, 
and cold and heat, and day and night ; the time element 
in civilisation; the ebb and flow of thought-movement 
from generation to generation — all this is so inscrutable 
that many mighty thinkers of the ages have pronounced 
it illusion. Nevertheless even as an illusion it must be 
reckoned with by man ; for, whether his finite self be also 
illusion, or whether it be real, so is it made that it knows 
itself in these time relations and conditions its present 
life upon them. What is hope, what is memory, what is 
continuous volition, what is pain, what is sorrow, but an 
aspect of individuality realised in time relations? "We 
spend our years as a tale that is told."^ "What is your 
life?" cries one of the early Christian teachers: "It is 
even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time and then 
vanisheth away."^ In youth, when, apparently, a long 

IPs. 90: 9. 2 James 4: 14. 



72 Barrows Lectures 

bright day is before one and existence glistens in morning 
sunshine, the unsubstantial nature of earthly conditions 
hides behind the optimism of unspent vitality; but, as 
the years advance and changes multiply, as memory 
records the names of vanished friends and the history of 
unfulfilled ambitions, unfinished works, unenduring satisfac- 
tions, the spirit of man cries out for some solution of the 
mystery, or for some anchor to steady it in the swelling tide 
of life. Nothing testifies more conclusively to the mysterious 
greatness of man than his manifold and persistent refusals 
to be passive toward the problem of time relations, as the 
drift wood is cast hither and thither upon the waste, or as 
the beasts that perish lie down and know not that their 
hour is come. Pessimism has its characteristic attitude 
toward time relations; the bitter protest against a force 
that turns life into mockery and sweeps it away as a dream. 
Fatalism has its austere yet heroic doctrine of submission 
to the inevitable. Theosophy utters its protest by the 
denial of reality. Christianity takes refuge in the time- 
lessness of God: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling- 
place in all generations. Before the mountains were 
brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and 
the world, even from everlasting to everlasting. Thou art 
God. Thou turnest man to destruction and say est. Return, 
ye children of men. For a thousand years in Thy sight 
are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in 
the night." ^ The timeless One that inhabiteth eternity; 
whose nature cannot be limited by days and years ; whose 
thought is knowledge; with Whom is no variableness 
neither shadow of turning; whose Being is absolute; 
whose name is "I am;" He is the foundation on which 
Christianity builds its doctrine of human life. "Jehovah 

1 Ps. 90 : 1-4. 



The Christian Idea of God 73 

is my Kock, my Fortress, my Deliverer, my God, my 
Strong Kock; in Him will I trust."* The Christian 
realises, with all thoughtful men, the transitoriness of life, 
the illusive and subtle nature of time, the extraordinary 
limitations imposed on human action by temporal con- 
ditions ; the pang, the peril, or the doom that attends on 
many vital interests because of those conditions ; yet for 
him life is not a painful illusion, nor a pathetic mockery, 
nor an aimless mass of contingencies. All is steadied, 
unified, consecrated by the one great thought extending 
beneath and binding together all other thoughts: the 
timelessness of God. "The Eternal God is thy Refuge, 
and underneath are the Everlasting Arms."^ 

The timelessness of God means more than that the 
Almighty is emancipated from the bondage of time 
relations. It means that those conditions which man, 
from his point of view, describes as temporal condi- 
tions are a mode of the divine Self -fulfillment and of the 
divine Self-realisation; that the world is God's world, 
in which, amid and through all of life's vicissitudes, the 
Christian believes that God is fulfilling Himself in many 
ways: 

He seems to hear a Heavenly Friend, 
And thro' thick veils, to apprehend 
A labour working to an end.^ 

It means that the persistent refusal of the human spirit to 
recognise time conditions as the final solution of the prob- 
lem of existence is in man the foreknowledge of his own 
eternity, the pledge of his own participation in the Divine 
nature. 

As the foundation to the house, as the root to the 

IPs. 18:2. 2Deut. 33:27. 

3LoBD Tennyson, " The Two Voices." 



74 Barrows Lectures 

tree, so is this conception of the timelessness of God to 
Christian experience. It gives a basis on which to build 
one's earthly house of life; even the assurance that were 
that house to be dissolved in some whirlwind of adverse 
time conditions, one has a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. It gives an 
anchorage to thought, striking beneath the accidents of 
the temporal and superficial, laying hold of the substance 
of absolute Being. It gives a stability to purpose, relat- 
ing the deed of the hour to the Eternal One in whose 
name it is done. It gives a dignity to character, as 
behoves a soul that knows its kinship with the Ever- 
lasting. It gives a hope for the world; that that time- 
less One, with whom a thousand years are as one day and 
one day as a thousand years, holds in His mind the key 
to the awful problem of human history ; that unto Him 
the confusion of events, the tumultuous struggles, the 
silent sufferings, the achievements of injustice, and the 
baitings of righteousness, are not what they seem to us; 
that to His clearer vision the unfoldings of a benig- 
nant plan emerge from the darkness, and by His merci- 
ful hand the weakness and the sin of man are being over- 
ruled for good. 

Such is the religious value of the timelessness of God 
as realised in Christian experience ; such its contribution to 
the worth of existence in this present world. When wearied 
with the interminable detail of life and its incessant repe- 
titions of unfruitful effort, the Christian remembers the 
all-embracing Perfection of the Divine Life, and knows 
that the seed of that completeness is planted in himself, 
as the offspring of God. When strained by sorrow and 
separation, the constant and bitter fruits of time relations, 
he considers that in the Presence of the timeless One all 



The Christian Idea of God 75 

God-like spirits meet. When burdened with social appre- 
hensions, and oppressed by conditions that retard the 
progress of good, he lifts up his eyes to the hills whence 
Cometh his help, and reflects that the whole vexed problem 
of civilisation is present to that Mind that slumbers not 
nor sleeps; and when, consecrating his powers unto right- 
eousness, and offering up himself unto Christ for such 
brief service as one life may render, he remembers how 
little one man may do before the night cometh when none 
can work — there is given him the recollection of his own 
kinship with God, and the assurance that the Eternal 
can fulfil Himself in and through the finite soul. 

Wherever Christianity truly exists, the timelessness of 
God is its perpetual inspiration. The generations perish, 
but this truth remains the same, yesterday and today and 
forever. Sorrow and joy, strife and peace, evil and right- 
eousness, death and life, may struggle together amid dis- 
solving time relations ; but they that take refuge in the 
Eternal shall never be confounded. Unto them is it given 
to say: 

Our God, our Help in ages past, 

Our Hope for years to come. 
Our Shelter from the stormy blast 

And our Eternal Home ; 
Under the shadow of Thy Throne 

Thy saints have dwelt secure; 
Sufficient is Thine arm alone, 

And our defence is sure. 
Before the hills in order stood, 

Or earth received her frame, 
From everlasting Thou art God, 

To endless years the same. 

We have advanced but to the threshold of the Chris- 
tian idea of God, In my next lecture we shall enter 



76 Barrows Lectures 

within its glorious recesses; speaking of the Presence of 
God; the Character of God; the Manifestation of God; 
and viewing all in the light of Him who is the supreme 
Source of all Christian experience, even as He is the 
supreme Manifestation in time of the timeless God — the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 



THIRD LECTURE 

THE LORD JESUS CHRIST THE SUPREME MANIFESTA- 
TION OF GOD 

The close of the last lecture found us occupied with 
the thought of God's independence of time-relations, as 
one of the elements that enrich the Christian idea of the 
Divine Being. Time-relations, with their intricacy and 
their necessity, do not condition the existence of Him unto 
whom one day is as a thousand years, a thousand years 
as one day. He is timeless in essence. Days, months, 
years ; seedtime and harvest ; generations, centuries, seons, 
are modes of the Divine self-realisation and self -fulfillment. 
The Eternal fulfills Himself in the temporal, even as the 
Invisible fulfills Himself in the visible. The contribution 
to Christian experience made by this thought already has 
been indicated. It adds to the worth of life, making pos- 
sible intelligent effort and rational hope. It is the back- 
ground whereon the mental eye, strained by the illusive- 
ness of finite existence, rests and recovers. It is the 
threshold whereon the Christian enters into the glorious 
recesses of the idea of God. Crossing now that threshold, 
hallowed by the feet of innumerable multitudes of Chris- 
tians, and also of those that acknowledged not the Chris- 
tian name, yet most truly were seekers after God, may we, 
as brethren, look on three elements of that fullness which 
Christianity finds in the content of the idea of a supreme, 
absolute, timeless Being: the Presence of God, the Char- 
acter of God, the Manifestation of God. 

The timelessness of God, His transcendence of tem- 
poral relations, becomes to the Christian a foundation and 

77 



78 Barrows Lectures 

a background for living, because the conception of time- 
lessness is realised, not by itself alone, but in association 
with other aspects of being. Timelessness, abstracted 
from intelligent life, conveys to the finite mind nothing 
essentially strengthening or reassuring. Mere independ- 
ence of time conditions is not, in itself, a quality having 
religious value. A barren rock, standing in nakedness 
within the wilderness, may outlast a thousand generations ; 
yet has it no message of comfort for the soul of man. 
The persistence of inorganic matter mocks at the evanes- 
cence of humanity, when one looks upon palace and fort- 
ress, built in pride and self-confidence by those who for 
centuries have slept in indistinguishable dust. The fact 
that God's life is not, as our own, confined within the 
bounds of days and years, means nothing that adds value 
to our existence, until, seen in the light of some other 
aspect of His being, it becomes related to us. 

That relationship is established through the thought 
of the presence of God. The timeless One whose essence 
cannot be bound, who inhabiteth eternity, is in His world 
and in every creature. Christianity conceives that abso- 
lute, timeless life as everywhere present. The sense of 
that all-pervading immanence finds expression both in the 
ancient Scriptures and in the later minds that have had 
heavenly enlightenment. 

Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? 

Or whither shall I flee from Thy Presence? 

If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there ; 

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold. Thou art there. 

If I take the wings of the morning 

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 

Even there shall Thy hand lead me, 

And Thy right hand shall hold me. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 79 

Such are the words of a Psalmist dear to Christians/ 
And these are the words of an Apostle : "The fullness of 
Him that fiUeth all in all."^ These ancient utterances are 
echoed by later words that enter far into the conception 
of the presence of God : 

I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused. 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.^ 

It will be perceived by my learned hearers that these 
expressions assume not only the presence of God, but the 
reality of the world pervaded by His presence. This is 
characteristic of Christianity, and the effects of this view 
of the world upon the Christian's sense of the value of 
living will be revealing themselves continuously as my 
argument proceeds. 

To avoid misapprehension, a brief account should be 
given here of the nature of that reality which Christianity 
attributes to the external world. It is a middle view 
between illusion and materialism. On the one hand, 
Christianity does not regard the external world as illusion, 
in the sense in which it is so regarded by pure theosophical 
monism. It believes in the reality of the individual and 
of the world in which he lives ; and while recognising that 
the intention of a doctrine of illusion may be to exalt the 
oneness of absolute being by denying the reality of 

1 Ps. 139 : 7-10. 2Eph. 1 ; 23. 3 Wobdswoeth, " Prelude." 



80 Barrows Lectures 

individualistic distinctions, Christianity holds that the 
existence of individualistic distinctions does not invade 
the integrity of absolute being, but provides it with a 
necessary field for self-expression. Therefore Christianity 
cannot regard the external world as illusion. On the other 
hand, it does not affirm reality in a materialistic sense. 
Materialistic realism gives to the external world of matter 
objective and independent reality apart from the action of 
mind. It makes the world real in its own right and by 
its own initiative ; separating the reality of matter from 
mind, and so separating the external world from God. It 
exists apart from God, and may exist without Him. Thus 
two principles are introduced into the universe — a spiritual 
principle and a material principle, existing in mutual inde- 
pendence. And when the materialist, shunning the idea 
of dualsm, undertakes upon a monistic basis to account 
for what is, mind becomes the mere property of an objec- 
tively real world of matter. Between these extremes stands 
the temperate idealism of Christianity. To it God, and 
self, and the world are real ; but the world is real to the 
individual only as his thought, his spiritual self, appre- 
hends it; even as the waves of ether are not light save to 
the eye that receives them. And the universe is real only 
in that its processes and parts are known, co-ordinated, 
and controlled through one Intelligence pervading all, 
working through all, realising itself in all. "He is before 
all things and by Him all things consist."^ The unity 
of life is the self-realisation of the Infinite Mind, in and 
through all that is. 

It is upon this basis that the presence of God within 
the world becomes an essential element of thought and 
the whole earth is filled with God. Yet this is not panthe- 

1 Col. 1:17. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 81 

ism, the presence of impersonal force — or the presence 
of abstract thought as distinguished from thinking being. 
It is the presence of self-conscious, self-determining 
Intelligence, fulfilling itself in and through all that is, by 
virtue of its existence as infinite. This presence, which 
fills nature, fills also the life of man, since man is a part 
of nature.^ 

It cannot be otherwise, by virtue of God's Infinity. 
He that is all in all must be in all that is. To say this is 
not to deny the reality of finite selfhood. The finite self 
is real ; and not only real, but necessary, that the Divine 
Subject may have self-expression through the human 
object. In this real self of man God is ; and His presence 
is the basis of spiritual potency in human life. It may or 
it may not be that conscience is, as Wordsworth said, 
"God's most intimate presence in the soul;" but, though 
the mystery of the Divine in man transcends complete 
analysis and definition, the fact of that presence lies at 
the foundation of Christian thought. 

O Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me, 

Thou understandest my thought afar off, 

Thou searchest out my path and my lying down; 

And art acquainted with all my ways. 

For there is not a word in my tongue 

But lo, O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether.^ 

The effects of this belief on those who cherish it add 
greatly to the worth of life in this world. The presence 
of God is the consecration of nature. None can deny the 
magnificence, the power, the marvellousness of nature. 
Whatever our philosophy, our eyes are open and we see 
that the world is great. How subtle are its processes of 
evolution, growth, reproduction, transformation; how 
enormous are its resources: 

1 Cf. Illingwoeth, Divine Immanence, p. 74. 2 Ps. 139 : 1-4. 



82 Barrows Lectures 

The precious things of heaven; the dew; 
The deep that coucheth beneath; 
The precious things of the fruits of the sun; 
The precious things of the growth of the moons; 
The chief things of the ancient mountains ; 
The precious things of the everlasting hills ! ^ 

How superb is His workmanship: the burnishing of the 
wings of birds; the indenting of the leaves of trees; the 
fashioning of gems in the earth ; the correlation of organs 
in the body of man. Physical science apprehends these 
properties of nature and, with delight, investigates and 
classifies them. But what shall be done with nature 
itself ? Shall this magnificence, this power, this profusion, 
this subtle accuracy of procedure, this masterful work- 
manship, be reduced to illusion and swept into the abyss 
of the unreal ? Or shall it be made a self-producing power 
apart from God, a self-sufficient eternal principle, a self- 
sustaining, materialistic, non-intelligent potency ? Chris- 
tianity answers: Not illusion, and not self- propagating 
force, is the secret of this wondrous world of nature, but 
conscious, free Intelligence exerting itself and fulfilling 
itself in the myriad forms and forces of terrestrial life. 

Thou Who hast given me eyes to see 

And love this sight so fair, 
Give me a heart to find out Thee 

And read Thee everywhere.^ 

The presence of God is deliverance from the lone- 
liness of finite personality. There is no loneliness like 
that of the human spirit driven in upon itself by the 
elusiveness of the external. The psychic solitude deepens 
as culture and self-knowledge quicken the sensitiveness 
of our inner life. The world, absorbed in its own pursuits, 

1 Dect. 33 : 13, 14. 

2 Keble, " The Christian Year," a hymn for Septuagesima Sunday. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 83 

neither knows ns as we are nor cares for us. Friendship 
may go with us for a season, but reaches soon the point 
where it can advance no farther, and pauses, leaving us to 
pass alone within the shadows of our personality. The 
solitariness of the soul sometimes is most awful; in the 
crowd of lives Individuality is everywhere, yet none that 
can interpret to us our aspirations, nor guide us in our 
gropings, nor help us when the mystery of living bows us 
to earth. Who can wonder that many great souls, driven 
in upon themselves by the pressure of the external, have 
sought to identify themselves with the absolute Soul of 
the universe as the one reality in a world of illusion; or 
that others, doubting even the reality of God, have held 
that the one remedy for life's insufferable loneliness lies 
in the extinction of all selfhood in the selfless silence of 
Nirvana. The Christian, driven in upon himself by the 
same pressure, a stranger to his own kindred, craving 
sympathy for sorrows that he cannot express, groping for 
light on problems that he cannot formulate, withdraws 
into the sanctuary of his inner life, not to meet there a 
mocking void with hollow echoes of his own questionings, 
but to find the presence of One "unto whom all hearts are 
open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are 
hid," and to hear a Voice, divinely wise, humanly tender, 
saying: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest."^ 

The presence of God gives rational continuity to 
individual life and to the life of the world. Look down 
into some great garden when the white summer clouds are 
flitting across the sun. Behold a thousand shadows coming 
and vanishing on the lawns — each an illusion, completed 
by its instantaneous appearance, without relation to aught 

1 Matt. 11 : 28. 



84 Barrows Lectures 

that may precede or follow, leaving no trace upon the 
substantial earth. So human thought and action, and the 
succession of lives and the train of generations, have seemed 
to some as shadows, following each other in incalculable 
succession; completing themselves by their illusory 
appearances; leaving no trace; establishing no relations; 
fulfilling no end. If mortal life be only this, the play of 
unrelated shadows on the field of being, if there be no 
underlying meaning, no subliminal purpose fulfilling itself 
in this world, then indeed is it more wise to believe illusion 
with its inseparable doom of sadness than to affirm reality ; 
for reality emptied of purpose is more awful than illusion. 
But to the Christian the presence of God supplies a 
principle that justifies belief in reality and in continuity, 
for the individual and for the world. The immanent God, 
intelligent, self-conscious, self -determining, encircles and 
conditions all that is. Beneath the fitful play of circum- 
stances, beneath the shadow-dance of impulse and accident, 
the timeless One fulfills Himself through time. To that 
all-comprehending Mind each human life has meaning ; in 
His thought each fills a place not filled by another. God 
is intelligence. God is purpose. "The counsel of the 
Lord standeth forever, the thoughts of His heart to 
all generations."^ It is worth while to live this mortal 
life, for the presence of the Infinite gives it continuity 
and meaning. It is worth while to have hope for the 
world, for the purpose of the Infinite unfolds beneath the 
stumblings of nations, the abuse of power, the lack of 
social love. It is worth while to pray: "Thy Kingdom 
come. Thy Will be done.'" 

The presence of God, like the timelessness of God, 
makes these contributions to the worth of life only because 

IPs. 33:11. 2 Matt. 6:10. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 85 

the Christian apprehends that presence not by itself alone, 
but in association with other aspects of being. Mere 
timelessness may be a thought as barren as the naked rock 
in the wilderness; so also the mere presence of infinite 
intelligence, apart from its self-realisation in moral love- 
liness, may intensify, not alleviate, the sorrow of life. If 
we affirm the existence of the Infinite Mind, and conceive 
it not in the appropriate vesture of beautiful character, 
life for the individual becomes more acutely pathetic. For 
his sufferings are witnessed by a mind that knows and 
pities not ; his struggles by an intelligence that considers 
not ; his aspirations by a being that offers no ethical ideal. 
It is easier to suffer in solitude than in the presence of 
one who knows yet cares not. The presence of God, as 
an element in the idea of the Divine being, gives sacred- 
ness, consolation, and hope to Christian experience because 
the character of God as conceived by Christianity is what 
it is. It becomes blessed to know that the presence of 
God fills all life because the moral qualities of that 
presence are what they are. In speaking of the character 
of God I trust that I shall say much that coincides with 
the belief of many of my brethren who are not Christians. 
I have no desire to claim for Christianity a monopoly 
of truth and excellence, nor to set the excellences of 
Christianity in competition with the excellences of other 
faiths. Wherever I find the ground covered by Chris- 
tianity covered also by the tenets of another religion, 
I rejoice; for nothing I believe more devoutly than that 
the Spirit of the One God is universal, working in the 
manifoldness of grace when and where and as He will. 
I am setting forth the Christian faith in detail, that these 
points of correspondence with other faiths may appear 
wherever they exist, and that, if there be any truth 



86 Barrows Lectures 

peculiar to Christianity which is capable of being shared 
by all men, it may be known and appropriated by all and 
not monopolised by a few. 

It may be said that the charm of Christianity centres 
in the character of God. His timeless being, His 
intelligent presence, are mighty thoughts ; yet would they 
be barren and comfortless in their austere magnificence 
were they not clothed with moral qualities that invite our 
confidence and attract our love. To set forth the elements 
of God's character as Christianity conceives them would 
require more time than I can command; but, as mirrors 
transmit suggestions of broad landscapes, so would I hold 
before you two expressions of Christian faith in which are 
mirrored the beauties of the Character of God. "God is 
Light."^ "God is Love."' 

I rejoice to think that Christians are not alone in 
conceiving God under the symbol of light. It would give 
me no pleasure to feel that they alone, of all the seekers 
after Him, had perceived the value of this symbol as a 
means of expressing certain elements in the being of God. 
For light, in its gladness and glory, belongs to all men. 
The sun, rising in majesty, scattering the night shadows, 
burning away noxious mists, revealing beauty, assisting 
growth, is for all the children of men. In our common 
possession of this central source of vitality we are all 
children of light. Nothing is more natural than that 
light should be taken up into religious thought as a 
symbol of God. Nothing is more splendid in the whole 
range of religious expression than some ascriptions of 
praise to God as light, arising from non-Christian sources. 
"I believe," says one of the Zarathushtrian prayers, "I 
believe Thee to be the best Being of all; the Source of 

ilJohnl:5. 2iJohn4:8. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 87 

light for the world. Everyone shall believe in Thee as the 
Source of light. Thou createst all good true things by 
means of the power of Thy good mind. Thou givest with 
Thy hand, filled with helps, good to the righteous man, as 
well as to the wicked, by means of the warmth of the fire 
strengthening the good things." ^ It is, then, in no spirit 
of superiority, but rather in the spirit of fellowship, that 
I point out how, in Christian thought, the beauties of the 
character of God are, in part, mirrored in the phrase, God 
is light. 

But, for every mind that uses light as a symbol of God, 
the symbol is individualised by what it signifies, by the 
specific connotations that attend it. It becomes therefore 
a matter of common interest to members of all religions 
in whose thought the light symbol assists the conception 
of God, to enquire of the Christian: '' What do you mean 
when you say, 'God is light* ? What connotations has 
the symbol for your mind?" 

Assuming that I am asked this question, I reply: 
Light has at least three distinct connotations — physical, 
intellectual, ethical.^ 

Physical light is inseparable from suggestions of joy, 
satisfaction, refreshment. (Of course we must not press 
the symbolism too far, for none knows better than an 
Oriental the wearisome glare of light in a rainless summer, 
or the refreshment of darkness falling down upon over- 
strained eyelids.) The intuitive associations of the mind 
with physical light are well put forth in a certain very 
ancient saying: "Light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it 
is for the eyes to behold the sun."^ Physical light associ- 
ates itself with thoughts of glory : the play of sunshine on 

1 Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XXXIII, p. 98. 

2 Cf. Westcott, Epistles of St. John, p. 16. 3 Eccl. 11 : 7. 



88 Barrows Lectures 

the glittering sea; the flashing peaks of snow-clad 
mountains ; the hues of flowers and birds and gems ; 

The splendid scenery of the sky, 
Where, through a sapphire sea, the sun 
Sails like a golden galleon.^ 

Physical light associates itself with vision. The eye 
is the correlate of light. In the idealistic philosophy, 
which refuses to admit a self-sufficient existence to matter 
apart from mind, light is not light apart from the property 
of visibility. The essential property of light is to disclose 
itself, to make itself seen ; even as the essential property 
of sound is audibility, to make itself heard. 

Intellectual light suggests whatsoever is free from 
ignorance, dullness, error, falsehood ; whatsoever is actual, 
according to reality, of the truth, truth itself. Intellectual 
light connotes knowledge, spreading its broad rays through 
the avenues of the knowable world, discerning the rela- 
tions of things, dispersing shadows, illuminating hidden 
paths. Intellectual light stands for self-knowledge ; for 
the mind shining upon itself ; for the perfection of wis- 
dom ; for inerrant judgment ; for the identification of 
truth with self. 

Ethical light stands for righteousness, clear, radiant as 
the sun at noonday ; separated from all false lights ; 
steadfast ; incapable of misleading ; without partiality ; a 
pure whiteness, blended of all moral perfections ; the 
glory of goodness ; the beauty of holiness. 

In each of these connotations — physical, intellectual, 
ethical — light becomes for the Christian a symbol of the 
character of God. As physical light suggests outshining 
glory and splendour, so that Infinite One is clothed upon 
with the glory of personal character. He is not imper- 

1 Longfellow, "A Day of Sunshine." 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 89 

sonal force, a theoretical factor in the problem of existence. 
He is Spirit, endued with distinctive qualities of radiant 
perfection. *'0 my God," cries one, "Thou art very 
great ; Thou art clothed with honour and majesty ; who 
coverest Thyself with light as with a garment."^ God is 
intellectual light. No veils enwrap the Infinite Mind. He 
sees things as they are. "All things are naked and 
opened before the eyes of Him with whom we have to 
do." ^ " In Him is no darkness at all." ^ In Him knowledge 
has no element of uncertainty, no alloy of errour ; it 
transcends time-relations, it is conterminous with all that 
is, even with Himself ; it is Truth. God is moral light. 
Injustice, unfaithfulness, are not in Him. He is upright. 
"Righteousness and judgment are the habitation of His 
Throne."* His thought. His purpose. His will, are notes 
of ethical completeness. God is holiness. God is good- 
ness. And as it is of the nature of light to shine, so this 
splendour of intellectual and moral light that invests the 
character of God is expressive, tends to manifestation. 
God is what He is, not for Himself alone. He is Light in 
the expressiveness of His being, that He may be known. 
Because He is. He shines, and men live in His light. All 
true knowledge emanates from Him: "In Thy Light shall 
we see light." ^ All human excellences are rays from that 
central Sun. It was a true instinct that led a great uni- 
versity of Europe to take for its legend Dominus Illumi- 
natio Mea. 

The beauty of the character of God is reflected in 
another expression that is a fundamental part of the 
Christian idea of the Divine Being: God is Love. Here 
also I have no desire to assume that the association of 

iPs.l44:l, 2. 2Heb. 4:13. 3lJohnl:5. 

*Ps.97:2. sps. 36:9. 



90 Barrows Lectures 

love with the character of God is peculiar to Christianity. 
I make no such assumption. If others have found their 
way to the heart of the Eternal, and have felt it "most 
wonderfully kind," it is the greater joy. But it involves 
no injustice to the belief of any to say that the history of 
religion is dark with deities with whom it was impossible 
for the mind to associate love. Have there not been 
among men conceptions of deity embodying every quality 
that could antagonise and defeat love? Have not men 
worshipped gods that rioted in lust and debauchery and 
sport ; or revelled in bloodshed, and battle ; or terrorised 
with the scourge of fear; or slept in serene abstraction 
whilst hearts, bowed with their burdens, torn with their 
sorrows, tormented with their sins, cried out for pity and 
received no answer? If, by a figure of speech, we may 
imagine religions helping one another, as, often and ten- 
derly, it is the privilege of individuals to do, in what bet- 
ter way could Christianity serve other faiths than by 
bringing forth her most cherished belief that God is love ? 
This is the heart of Christianity, its most central and 
esoteric truth : God is love. While the influences emanat- 
ing from it, like the far-spreading beams of sunlight, 
touch with gladness and warm with vitalising force the 
whole expanse of Christian belief; this truth itself, like 
the sun, burns with an insufferable glory that blinds the 
eye essaying to pierce its depth. The mystery of Chris- 
tianity finds its focus in this truth: God is love. For 
these words imply more than the kindly disposition of 
God toward man. Back of all questions involving rela- 
tionship to man ; back of all time-relations ; in the 
timeless essence of that Life which is self-conscious, self- 
determining intelligence, God is love. To affirm what this 
implies is impossible until we reflect on the nature of love. 



1 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 91 

Love is the affection of one for another. Love is a rela- 
tion of subject and object. Love is the outgoing of ten- 
der thought, seeking response, and finding completion 
through response. If Qod in His timeless essence is love, 
and if love, in the very nature of things, involves subject 
and object and self-completion through response, then 
the Divine Essence must contain within itself personal 
distinctions whereby love is realised. In the timeless 
essence of pure and holy intelligence, love is the very life 
of God ; the relationship that binds in one ineffable Unity 
the self -realising, self -satisfying Personal Distinctions — 
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. This 
mystery is the heart of Christianity ; this is its most cen- 
tral and esoteric truth: God is love. Love is of God. 
Its fountain and origin are in Him. As one finds the 
mighty river of the plains pouring through the throngs 
of human life, attracting towns and villages to its margin, 
permitting familiar and friendly uses, conveying refresh- 
ment and fertility ; and as one traces back its course until 
the mystery of its primal spring is hidden in the silence 
of the everlasting hills; so love, holy love, the greatest 
blessing of human life, the river of consolation whose 
channel should plough the arid plain of existence, and 
bring coolness and cleanness and hope to every home and 
heart — love is of God. Its source is not on earth, a thing 
of time, to come and pass away. It is in the mystery of 
Infinite Being ; in the depths of God ; in the self-realising, 
self -completing Oneness of Him who reveals Himself to 
our finite understanding as the Father, the Son, the Holy 
Spirit. 

As this love, whose primal spring is in the Essence of 
Godhead, emerges into time-relations and pours itself upon 
the life of man, it expresses the attitude of God toward 



92 Barrows Lectures 

humanity. God is love in His own self-sufficient essence. 
God is love in His attitude toward man. That self-expres- 
sion of tenderness, of holy affection, which completes itself 
through the Personal Distinctions within the Godhead, in 
ways incomprehensible by us, utters itself in ways that 
man can understand, as the Infinite Mind, moving within 
time-relations, discloses its purpose toward humanity. 
The heart of man has been slow to believe the simple propo- 
sition that God is love. There have been occasional ap- 
proximations thereto; clear-eyed seers have arisen from 
time to time, to whom came the vision of love, and the con- 
ception of a God yearning toward man. The leaders of 
Judaism saw glimpses of a gracious and fatherly heart, yet 
was their vision limited by an hereditary nationalism that 
set off Israel from the world as the favourite of God, the 
distinctive object on which His affection expended itself; 
while for the Gentiles was reserved wrath against the day 
of wrath. 

Apart from these occasional approximations, the heart 
of man, throughout the long and impressive evolution of 
religion, has hesitated to launch itself in unreserved confi- 
dence upon the ocean-like thought that God is love. We 
cannot wonder at the hesitation, for the thought of original, 
Divine love is tremendous to the verge of incredibility. 
And even within the bounds of Christianity that hesitancy 
has asserted itself in very striking ways. An unprejudiced 
study of the history of religion suggests the opinion that 
the religious conclusion to which man is most reluctant to 
commit himself is that God is love, and that God's attitude 
and relation to man are the attitude and relation of love. 
Apparently it has not been difficult to conceive of a supreme 
power in the terms of impersonal force or principle, sub- 
sisting without purpose under all forms of life. Nor has 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 93 

it been difficult to believe in an absolute, self-sufficient 
being, the only Reality, impassive, expressionless, hidden 
for a season under the veil of illusion, which in the end 
shall be dissolved, leaving the undisturbed Absolute. Nor 
has it been difficult to believe in a multiplicity of gods, 
whether ultimate in themselves, or manifold provisional 
expressions of the one Ultimate Reality; gods with many 
functions, beneficent or destructive, touching human life 
at every point, and requiring at human hands forms of 
service. Along these several lines the faith of immense 
multitudes has been given with sincerity. 

The history of religion shows also a disposition to 
conceive of God's attitude to man as, antecedently, un- 
friendly or malevolent, or whatsoever is the reverse of 
love ; and to condition religion on the fundamental ground 
of propitiating unfriendly Deity, averting malevolent 
intention, appeasing wrath, winning favour and love by 
acts of sacrifice and devotion. I speak with the greatest 
reverence of this type of religious feeling, which has 
entered largely into the experience of the race, and from 
which Christians by no means are exempt. I am not here 
to criticise any who thus have judged of God, and whose 
religious life has built itself on the presupposition of a 
malevolent or angry or indifferent deity, who must be 
appeased with sacrifices, or whose love must be stimulated 
with gifts. Perhaps it is inevitable that, in the evolution 
of human thought, these conceptions of God shall occur. 
There are conditions incident to all lives that make them 
probable. We all are liable to confuse the terms of the 
problem of human personality. If we merge our per- 
sonality in the Personality of God, then trouble, sorrow, 
need, being illusions, are matters of indifference to God. 
He cares not that we seem to suffer. If we separate our 



94 Barrows Lectures 

personality from God, not remembering that He is our 
Father and that His life completes itself in us, then that 
instinctive dread which in every age makes weakness 
shrink in the presence of power, enters into our concep- 
tion of Deity, investing it with terrifying attributes, and 
suggesting the impulse to avert trouble by propitiating 
its author. 

All of us alike are facing the problem of evil, "the 
supreme enigma of the universe ; the formidable obstacle 
to moral trust in the power continuously working in the 
world." ^ Animal suffering, human pain, errour with its 
pitiful consequences, violations of morality against which 
conscience protests, acts inconsistent with eternal moral 
obligation, death which cruelly separates persons united 
in social fellowship — these are evils which seem at variance 
with a Divine order, with our ideal of love and justice, and 
with omnipotent moral integrity. In the face of these 
things, how can one wonder at the sadness of religion, the 
hopelessness of many of its expressions, the remoteness of 
man from God, the atmosphere of pessimism, the longing 
to escape from the intolerable illusion of living ? These 
emotions are involuntary ; nay, they are reasonable, if no 
word has been spoken out of the depths of Infinite Being 
to deny the terrific inference that all things are as they 
are because God would have it so ; or because God is 
malevolent and will pursue men with evil until they turn 
and worship him ; or because God is indifferent, en wrapt 
in the serenity of abstract existence, caring not that the 
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain. 

Christianity believes that that word has been spoken; 
it is, God is love. In the mystery of His essence He 
realises love through personal distinctions within the 

1 Cf. Pbaseb, Philosophy of Theism, Vol. II, pp. 153-60. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 95 

Godhead — distinctions that are dimly conceivable by us 
in the terms of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Moving in 
time-relations. He realises love in His attitude and dispo- 
sition toward man, in the outgoings of holy affection, in 
the tenderness of holy sympathy, in the yearning of holy 
desire, in the exertion of holy influence, in the accomplish- 
ment of holy purposes. 

God is love ! That love is original in God, springing 
out of the depths of His own being. It is not stimulated 
by an antecedent act of man. It is not purchased by 
gifts, nor attracted by sacrifices. Love in man is not the 
cause, but the consequence, of the love of God. "We 
love, because he first loved us."^ 

God is love ! That love is universal. The Jew, true to 
his Semitic tradition, conceived of God as a national God, 
and of his love as a special boon of Israel. But, in the 
fullness of time, that limitation fell away. Love was 
manifested in world-relations. Its inclusive breadth 
acknowledged no exceptions. It overflowed all tribal and 
national limits. It took no account of race lines. It 
overpassed ecclesiastical and religious boundaries. It 
asked not whether man loved in return. It embraced the 
world, saying : "I will draw all men unto Myself !"^ 

God is love ! That love is personal. It is the love of 
a Divine Heart for each human heart ; the appreciation by 
an Infinite Mind of the thoughts, desires, hopes, sorrows, 
of every human mind. It is the Infinite realising itself 
in the finite in the terms of love. 

This, as I have said, is the heart of Christianity, its 
most central and esoteric truth. Light and love describe 
the character of God. Of such a nature is the Presence 
that pervades the world. Such qualities clothe with per- 

1 1 John 4 : 19. 2 John 12 : 32. 



96 Barrows Lectures 

sonality that timeless Esseuce of infinite life, "who is 
before all things and by whom all things consist."^ 
Christianity faces with all other faiths the problem of 
evil. With them she feels the prevalence of suffering, 
the immensity of wrong, the conflict of interests, the 
shadow of death ; for her, as for others, the mystery of 
pain hangs like a veil over life ; yet, hope, and not 
despair, is the spirit of Christianity ; a hope that suffering 
and wrong and death cannot abolish or destroy ; a hope 
that is as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, 
entering into that within the veil. That hope lays hold 
of the character of God. Life is mystery and life is 
sorrow. God is Light and God is Love. 

Evidently such a faith, for those who are able to 
commit themselves to it, carries with it a possible con- 
tribution to the worth of life, in this present world, which 
may be described as of the highest importance. It offers 
a steadfast object upon which to look amidst the shifting 
phases of existence and by which to resist the paralysing 
influence of pessimistic depression. Bewilderment gives 
place to rational conviction. God no longer remains a 
blank enigma of malevolence or indifference, nor life a 
chaos of confused adversities. Not less may be the burden 
of trouble, not lighter the yoke of care, but the mind has 
a basis for thinking and the heart a resting-place. It 
offers a channel for pent-up affections of the soul. Man 
was made for God, and with capacity to love God. Great 
as is his potency for earthly love, and for realising self- 
sacrifice on behalf of others (and in this, permit me to say, 
some beautiful Hindu lives have been pre-eminent), there 
is in him a capacity for loving the Divine that exceeds 
even his power to love the human. The deepest emotional 

1 Col. 1:17. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 97 

possibility of the soul is love for God. That love, like all 
other love, inhabits the inner consciousness, imprisoned, 
unrealised, until the vision of God awakens and liberates 
it. He to whom God is impersonal force, or impassive 
mind, or malevolent will, may believe and tremble ; he 
cannot love. But when the character of the Eternal One 
appears, vested in light as in a garment warm with love, 
the answering potency of love within the heart of man is 
kindled and goes forth to God. 

I shall ask you now to observe that the two subjects 
which have occupied me in this lecture — the presence of 
God and the character of God — rest upon a third subject 
which is the base of the whole structure of Christian 
belief. That base is the Manifestation of God. The 
conception of God as a presence, and the conviction that 
that presence is invested with moral character of light 
and love, rest upon the belief that God manifests Himself. 
The thought of the manifestation or self-revelation of 
Deity is not peculiar to Christianity. It forms an impor- 
tant and effective part of other faiths. No idea is more 
familiar to my Indian auditors than that of divine embodi- 
ment; of gods coming down to earth in the likeness of 
men, or of men exalted to divine rank and invested with 
the insignia of gods. The range of this idea in the field 
of Eastern religious thought is too vast to be reviewed at 
this time, and too well understood to require a restate- 
ment by me. I shall content myself with an expression 
of satisfaction that, in claiming the idea of the manifesta- 
tion of God as the base of the whole structure of Chris- 
tian belief, I claim nothing in itself unfamiliar to my 
auditors or alien to their intellectual instincts. While 
the development of this idea along Christian lines leads 
to conclusions which, if admitted, will modify the religious 



98 Barrows Lectures 

thought of the East and conduct it to a new point of view, 
the thesis that the Supreme Being manifests Himself is 
common ground. 

The manifestation or self -revelation of Deity is open to 
two dissimilar interpretations. It may be regarded as 
apparent rather than real; as a part of the phenomenal 
and illusory order of the external universe, occurring as a 
concession to man's limited condition, rather than the out- 
come of metaphysical relations inherent in the very life 
of God. In the Gita^ Krishna is represented as account- 
ing for his incarnation on the ground of emergencies in 
human affairs : "As often as there is a decline of virtue or 
an increase of vice in the world, I create myself anew; 
and thus I appear from age to age, for the preservation of 
the just, the destruction of the wicked, the establishment 
of virtue." So also when one considers the whole subject 
of polytheism, it appears as a system for popular use ; an 
adaptation of religion to the craving of the average heart 
for some sort of manifestation of God; a concession to 
man's need, rather than the outcome of metaphysical 
necessity in the nature of Deity. And, in support of this 
feeling, we find higher intellects soaring above polytheis- 
tic manifestations as things to be discarded by the enlight- 
ened soul, which, esteeming itself to be identical with the 
one Unmanifested Self, seeks the realisation of that 
identity by devotion to knowledge. Such is one interpre- 
tation of the Supreme Being manifesting Himself. The 
occasion for manifestation is emergency in human life, 
and manifestation is concession to that emergency, by 
means of incarnation ; the taking on of a human body. 
However beautiful or effective these incarnations may 
be, they are the expression of nothing in the nature of 

1 Cf. IV, 7, 8; SiiATEE, Higher Hinduism, p. 137. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 99 

God that demands self -manifestation in order to its own 
completeness. The conception of God remains as com- 
plete without these manifestations as with them, for God, 
in the last analysis, is impersonal, undiflPerentiated being ; 
solitary ; self -identical ; unqualified ; the final Result when 
all personal distinctions have been eliminated. 

I cannot point out too distinctly that this method of 
interpreting the manifestation of God is not the method 
of Christianity. In Christian thought the manifestation 
of God is not primarily an expedient adopted as a con- 
cession to the ignorance of man; it is the outcome of 
relations inherent in the life of God. There is a self- 
revealing principle in the Nature of God without which 
He would not be God. Self-revelation is not a disclosure 
of personality extorted from God by external occurrences 
or forces. It is not an afterthought occasioned by the 
decline of virtue or the increase of vice in the world. 
Self -revelation occurs in the nature of personality. God 
is necessarily self -revealing because God is truly personal. 
We have seen that Christian thought reaches its idea of 
God not finally by the path of negation, by eliminating 
individualistic distinctions, by seeking an unqualified 
Absolute that shall be emptied of content ; but by affirma- 
tion, by enriching the Absolute with all possible qualities 
consistent with moral perfection. And we have seen that 
Christian thought conceives personality as self-realisation 
through relations with other existences, and judges that 
God would be less than human unless His being involved 
such self-realisation. It is in the deep recesses of the 
Divine Personality, in what I have called the most esoteric 
truth of Christianity, that the conception of a self -mani- 
festing God finds its source. The Essence of God is not 
abstract, undifi:*erentiated being — being from which have 



100 Barrows Lectures 

been eliminated the marks of personality, and in which 
abides only the passive blessedness of pure thought. The 
Essence of God is life, realising its Godhead through 
Personal Distinctions, which, whatever else, they may 
connote from the point of view of the Divine Intelligence, 
interpret themselves to us in the terms, "God the Father," 
"God the Son," "God the Holy Spirit." In that mystery 
is the Divine Personality. Therein God knows in Himself 
Subject and Object. Therein love is born. The Father 
loveth the Son ; the Son loveth the Father. Thereby, 
God is love. 

But perfect self-realisation on the part of God demands 
other existences than Himself, that He may complete 
Himself in and through them. There is a sense, as we 
have seen, in which man is necessary to God. The 
existence of real, finite intelligence is denied on the ground 
that to admit this reality would be to limit the Infinite. 
But I have shown that in Christian belief the reality of 
finite intelligence is essential to the infinity of the Infinite ; 
that God would be limited if there were no finite beings 
to whom He could give Himself in an expression of that 
love which is inherent in His personality. As light is 
only ether-waves, and not light until it be correlated 
with the eye that receives it, so God is not all that God 
may be until with His infinite personality we correlate 
finite personality, to receive His revelation. The mani- 
festation of God, therefore, is no concession to an emer- 
gency, no belated afterthought in the halting order of 
Providence. It occurs in the nature of the case. It is 
as normal in God as needful for man. It is the seal and 
attestation of the metaphysical unity of existence. 

The manifestation of God enriches Christian experi- 
ence, adds to the value of life, and justifies belief in its 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 101 

reality by revealing the presence and by interpreting the 
character of God. The moral value of manifestation de- 
pends on the significance of that which is manifested. 
By "manifestation" I do not mean wonder- workings, to 
astonish the ignorant, appall the superstitious, or amuse 
the curious. I mean self -revelation for moral ends. The 
ominous play of lightning on the evening clouds, and the 
phosphorescent flashes in the unresting ocean, are types 
of much that in the history of religion has diverted atten- 
tion from the deeper aspects of Divine manifestation to 
its superficial details. The eyes of men have been 
dazzled by the miraculous, and blinded to the enormous 
spiritual truths, in comparison with which miracles are 
incidental, if not unimportant. Passing by the subject of 
miracles, as one not requiring discussion in this connec- 
tion, and permitting myself to say only that I believe in 
miracles, while not regarding them as the chief creden- 
tials of Christianity, and not esteeming them as in any 
sense more divine than the common and ordinary opera- 
tions of God, I shall speak only of the moral significance 
of God's self -manifestation, as it is apprehended by Chris- 
tian belief and treasured in Christian experience. 

The manifestation of God is the self -revelation of His 
presence and of His character. It is not necessary that 
the curiosity of man shall be stimulated by the wonder- 
plays of gods, nor his imagination fed with theistic 
romances; but from the Christian point of view it is 
necessary that man shall realise God's presence and shall 
know God's character. "He that cometh to God," said 
one,^ "must believe that He is, and that He is a 
re warder of them that diligently seek Him." And these 
two necessities that condition spiritual religion in man 

iHeb.ll:6. 



102 Barrows Lectures 

correspond to those metaphysical relations in God which 
make His self -manifestation an integral part of His per- 
sonality. The infinite self-realisation involves relation 
with the finite intelligence ; that relation becomes possible 
only as God discloses His presence and His character. 
For man cannot relate himself to a being of whose exist- 
ence he is unconscious, nor love a being of whose character 
he has no conception. In all this I have no doubt that I 
have the intellectual approval and the spiritual consent of 
many of my learned hearers who are non- Christian ; and 
now, as in the remainder of this lecture I pourtray that 
which is most distinctively Christian in connection with 
the Divine manifesting of presence and of character, I 
would speak so guardedly that the faith I profess may 
truly be uttered; so humbly that intense conviction may 
not be mistaken for arrogant assertion; so lovingly that I 
may retain the confidence of those who reject my con- 
clusions; so clearly that the intrinsic reasonableness of 
Christianity may awaken in some minds a disposition to 
give it more careful examination. 

I have said that, in Christian thought, the manifesta- 
tion of God consists in the self -revelation of His presence 
and of His character. The manifestation of His presence 
is made through nature, through history, through the 
spiritual illumination of man. The manifestation of His 
character is made in the Person and the Sacrifice of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

The manifestation of the presence of God is made 
through nature. So Christ affirms, speaking as a Re- 
vealer : ' ' Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they 
toil not. neither do they spin : and yet I say unto you that 
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 103 

which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He 
not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? " ^ Such 
was His teaching, antedating natural science, and boldly 
committing Christianity to the conception of a Deity im- 
manent in nature and expressing Himself through nature. 
In the intellectual upheavals of modern times many cher- 
ished opinions concerning the material world have been 
swept away, and every physical problem has required 
restatement in the terms of evolution — a principle toward 
which the far-seeing wisdom of the Upanishads pointed. 
The earlier view of instantaneous creation has vanished ; 
the whole conception of the method of material progress 
has altered; yet the Christian belief that God abides in 
nature and is operative perpetually therein has but taken 
on richer and more permanent form through the unfold- 
ings of evolutionary science. So far from the scientific 
position being incompatible with the Christian position as 
regards Divine manifestation through nature, the concep- 
tion of the physical universe as "not a finished product, 
but a continuous natural process," and of creation as "not 
a sudden event, but a divinely determined evolution,"^ is 
that one which most fully expresses the Christian idea of 
self-revelation through nature, even as also it is that which 
makes it possible for a man of science to be a man of 
Christian faith also. 

The manifestation of the presence of God is made 
through history. All thoughtful minds have pondered 
the problem of history, seeking some intelligible solu- 
tion. The stream of events rolling through the cen- 
turies, the rising and falling of nations, the genesis and 
development of beliefs, the counterpoise of social forces, 

1 Matt. 6 : 28-30. 

2 A. Cambell Frazer, Philosophy of Theism, Vol. II, p. 83. 



104 Barrows Lectures 

the struggles and sorrows of humanity, present conditions 
too vital to be ignored. For many great minds illusion 
is the only adequate solution of the problem of history: 
one long troubled dream fretting the surface of the uni- 
versal mind, yet stirring not its depths; one vast mirage 
playing harmlessly above the ocean of impassive being. 
Others have interpreted the problem of history in the 
terms of fatalistic necessity: all things moving on in a 
fixed order, an inevitable sequence; independent of 
causes; without reason; without purpose; without pity. 
Others have sought the clue to the mystery in a high pre- 
destinarianism, that lodged all causation in the inscrutable 
will of God — a will that acts on a rational basis, yet 
veils its reasons from human eyes, leaving no freedom 
to the will of man. Others, rejecting the theory of 
Divine will, and oppressed by the reality of life and the 
cumulative sorrow of humanity, have found in philo- 
sophical pessimism the gloomy pathway to a doctrine of 
despair. The Christian beholds in history the presence 
of God. Believing in the reality of events and persons, 
intuitively certain of the freedom of the will, while 
acknowledging its limitations, the Christian sees in the 
outgoings of history and behind the volitions of free beings 
the movement of God's hand, the purpose of God's mind. 
He believes that the life of the race is neither illusion 
nor chaos ; neither the phantasmal play of unrealities nor 
the aimless impacts of irrational forces; but rather a field 
of action whereon free and rational spirits exercise the 
rights of individuality, in the pursuits of good and evil, 
beneath the overruling providence of a God who is light 
and who is love, and who in His own way and time is 
accomplishing for the world a purpose "too great for 
haste," and wrought out by men for men. The Christian 



?^ 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 105 

sees mind and purpose operating in all history — in the 
history of the physical world, of science, of civilisation, 
of government, of religion. He believes in the providence 
of a good God, seeking spiritual ends and paternal in its 
quality — a wise, kindly, faithful administration of moral 
government ; a plan of God.^ Everywhere the fulfillment 
of that gracious plan is being retarded by the sin and 
selfishness and ignorance of man. Enormous barriers of 
unrighteousness resist it, ancient systems of oppression 
hide it from the suffering ones for whom it is meant. But, 
dark and difficult as is the riddle of history, tremendous 
the delay of good and the advance of evil, cruel as are 
the alienations of races, and pitiful the sufferings of the 
weak, Christianity sees the purpose of the Eternal mov- 
ing through time, and knows that, though the day of the 
Lord tarry, nevertheless it shall come at last ; when right- 
eousness shall triumph, and oppression shall be shattered; 
when the sorrows of hearts shall be comforted, and the 
Will of God shall be done. It is that sense of God's 
presence in history that rescues Christianity from pessi- 
mism, and puts a new song in its mouth — a song of hope 
for the oppressed, of courage for the reformer: 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; 
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 

stored; 
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword; 

His truth is marching on! 
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat; 
Oh! be swift my soul to answer Him; be jubilant my feet; 

Our God is marching on ! ^ 

The manifestation of the presence of God is made 
through the spiritual illumination of man. I rejoice to 

1 Cf. Clarke, Outline of Christian Theology, 6th ed., p. 147. 

2 Julia Wakd Howe, " Battle Hymn of the Republic." 



106 Barrows Lectures 

think that the idea of the Divine abiding in the heart 
of man is one of the favourite religious conceptions of 
the Upanishads/ It has been pointed out by Professor 
Deussen of Kiel,^ that Indian philosophy took its course 
uninfluenced by western Asiatic and European thought; 
and that because of this independence, wherever iden- 
tical conceptions appear in the thought of East and West, 
the presumption in favour of their absolute truth approxi- 
mates to certainty. Nothing is more real to the Christian 
than the sense of the indwelling Presence manifesting 
itself in the illumination of the understanding, the com- 
munication of influence, the revelation of truth. God is 
the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, making Himself known to us, 
not by the outward signs only, but by inward assurances 
and inward gifts. "The Spirit," says St. Paul,' "beareth 
witness with our spirit that we are children of God." 
The reasonableness of this inward manifestation is founded 
on our conception of the unity of personal existence. 
The apprehension of the external and visible occupies 
but a part of consciousness. The apprehension of sub- 
jective conditions and experiences is a field of observation 
more extensive, even more trustworthy. 

It is not as a pantheist that the Christian conceives of 
the Indwelling Presence, although much that pantheism 
has said on this subject could, with slight modification, be 
translated into the characteristic language of Christianity. 
The separateness of personal individuality is essential to 
the Christian idea, although the kinship of the human 
spirit with the Divine is not only admitted, but held as 
the necessary protection against dualism. It is by virtue 

1 Cf. Slater, The Higher Hinduism, p. 152. 

2 Cf. Indian Antiquary, previously quoted. 
3Eom. 8:16. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 107 

of this community of spiritual essence, this correspondence 
of nature, that the presence of God has disclosed itself to 
the experience of men. It has made itself felt from the 
beginning in that universal yearning toward the Infinite 
which is, I believe, the most fundamental fact in religion. 
This correspondence of nature between God and man is 
the channel of revelation. Through this channel truth 
has come from God to man. Through this channel not 
only has the Love of God projected helpful influences, but 
the Intelligence of God has communicated knowledge not 
otherwise accessible ; making individual persons the recipi- 
ents of these communications that they in turn might 
announce them to others. Truth so communicated is 
revelation. It is not in accord with the spirit of Chris- 
tianity that any should claim for it a monopoly of revela- 
tion, or deny that God has communicated also with the 
seers and prophets of other religions. To claim that the 
Bible contains the totality of revealed truth, and that God 
has not communicated with the seers of other faiths, would 
be an act of bigotry indefensible on philosophical and 
moral grounds. Not only would such a claim be incapable 
of proof, but it would be opposed to the spirit of Chris- 
tianity, which is not provincial and exclusive, but universal 
and assimilative. 

The true Christian spirit neither claims nor desires 
monopoly of revealed truth. It believes (in the recent 
words of an English scholar) that "the history of religion 
is the history of the gradual revelation to man of the 
Divine will." It rejoices in the thought that all men 
everywhere share a spiritual nature capable of receiving 
communications from God; and that the One God who 
loves all men alike, and desires that all shall come to the 
knowledge of the truth, everywhere is working upon 



108 - Barrows Lectures 

human spirits for good, and through all ages has made 
special lives the depositaries of such truths as they were 
able to receive. As it acknowledges the evolutionary 
method as the method of God in Nature and in History, 
it is prepared to see the same method employed in Eevela- 
tion ; and to honour all the religious experience of the race 
as contributory to the one final end of revelation, the full 
knowledge of the presence and character of God. In this 
evolutionary order of Divine self -disclosure comes at length 
that great sequence of communications made to the Jewish 
branch of the Semitic stock, consummated in the teachings 
of Christ and the inspired Apostles, and recorded in the 
collection of books known as the Bible. The significance 
of these communications was not national, but universal. 
The distinctive relation of them to the Jews was incidental 
and provisional. They were the monopoly of no nation, 
of no continent, of no race. They were not committed to 
the interpretations of any one system of philosophy, occi- 
dental or oriental. They were to be the theological 
shibboleth of no party, the ecclesiastical badge of no sect, 
the political engine of no government. They were world- 
utterances, designed to fill up that which was lacking in 
all religions; to gather together, co-ordinate, and give 
common expression to the total religious spirit of the 
human race. They were to be a well of water set in the 
open plain of humanity, springing up unto everlasting 
life, for all, of every name, who should come and drink ; 
a common doorway opened in the elemental structure of 
things, through which all nations and kindreds and peoples 
and tongues should advance to larger life, and better hope, 
and clearer vision of a present God. 

I approach now the concluding, and I may say the 
crowning, thought of the present lecture — the thought 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 109 

for which all that has preceded has been a clearing of the 
way, and in which is suggested the most august and 
significant communication that Christianity makes to the 
world. I have pointed out that, in Christian thought, the 
manifestation of God consists in the self -revelation of His 
presence and of His character. Upon the former we have 
dwelt. I approach with reverence the latter. The Self- 
revelation of the Character of God is made in the Person 
and the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have 
seen that, in Christian thought, the Divine manifestation 
is not an incident or an afterthought, but the outcome 
of relations inherent in the life of God. There is a self- 
revealing principle in the Divine nature without which 
God would not be God. He is necessarily self -revealing 
because He is truly personal. And therefore the signifi- 
cance of the manifestation is moral and not spectacular. 
It is not mere wonder-play — flashes of supernatural 
brightness to astonish the ignorant, appall the supersti- 
tious, or amuse the curious. It is profound self -disclosure 
in ways that shall affect the moral life of man — the self- 
disclosure of His presence and the self -disclosure of His 
character. Evidently these two, Presence and Character, 
must be joined to produce a manifestation that shall 
accomplish moral ends. The conviction of the presence 
of a Deity, apart from assurance of his character, may 
indeed produce a religion ; it cannot produce a religion of 
the highest moral beauty. To believe in God may be an 
act of blind credulity, or of cowering dread, or of impotent 
hatred. There is an old Christian Scripture that says : 
"The devils also believe and tremble."^ It is therefore 
through the disclosure of His character that God inter- 
prets His presence for moral ends. There can be no 

1 James 2 : 19. 



110 Barrows Lectures 

doubt that character is manifested most conclusively in 
the terms of concrete personality and concrete action. If 
we wish to know the character of anyone, we study the 
attributes of personality manifested through conduct. The 
real greatness or littleness of a soul, ultimately, is mirrored 
in the life that is lived. It is this principle of life as the 
demonstration and interpretation of character that condi- 
tions the Incarnation of the Son of God. 

The Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ is not the 
birth of a hero ; it is the Revelation of the Character of 
the Eternal God under the form of time and in the terms 
of human action. 

I am well aware that in these statements I am proceed- 
ing upon assumptions concerning the nature of God that 
are not identical with those of Hinduism. It is in no 
controversial spirit that I thus proceed, but in the belief 
that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation is, in the 
evolution of Divine revelation, the last and greatest con- 
tribution to the value of life in this world ; that it is of 
common interest for all men ; that it is worthy of the most 
serious examination by all who agree with the words 
already quoted: "The history of religion is the history of 
the gradual revelation to man of the Divine Will." The 
Biblical and distinctively Christian idea of the Incarnation 
of Christ, if it is to be so understood that its great prac- 
tical value shall appear, must be viewed in contrast with 
two conceptions familiar to Eastern minds and in them- 
selves of the highest intellectual dignity. One of these is 
the identification of the human self with the universal 
Self or Brahma ; the other is the noble readiness of the 
East to welcome heroic human leaders. 

The first of these conceptions gives an introspective 
tone to much of the religious thought of the East, and 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 111 

exalts an esoteric and subjective knowledge of the Infinite 
above the objective and reverential love of a Personal God, 
which is the characteristic note of the Christian religion. 
The first and great commandment of Christianity is : 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy Grod with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 
strength."^ Christ, setting Himself before us as the con- 
crete object of this affection, says: "If ye love Me ye will 
keep My commandments."^ But from the Eastern point 
of view there is little place for this love in the religious 
system. Knowledge, esoteric knowledge of the Infinite, 
excludes it, and excludes it logically; for if I am God 
and my apparent separateness is the snare that hinders 
me from realising my identity of substance with the 
Infinite, love to God, which presupposes my separate 
individuality, is but tightening the bands that keep me 
apart from God; retarding that release which can be 
hastened only by ignoring the personal distinctions involved 
in love, and plunging beneath them into the abysmal 
blessedness of undifferentiated knowledge. 

As distinguished from this great conception of being, 
the Christian idea, that the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus 
Christ is the revelation of the character of the Eternal 
God under the form of time and in the terms of human 
action, involves a certain philosophical readjustment on 
the part of some of the Eastern students of Christianity. 
It requires that, while assuming a monistic theory of the 
universe (which I believe to be a rational theory), the 
reality of the finite individual shall be granted. Grant 
this, grant that the human soul is so far separable from 
the Universal Soul that the distinction of subject and 
object is possible, and all that the Incarnation means on 

1 Mark 12: 30. 2 John 14: 15. 



112 Barrows Lectures 

God's. side and on man's side becomes intelligible, cred- 
ible, and precious. Love and knowledge are made one; 
the finite spirit, conscious of its union with Infinite Spirit, 
yet surrendering not the god-like powers of individuality, 
attains, not psychological, but moral oneness with the 
Divine, through the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus. 
Is it too much to say that this readjustment is not unworthy 
of the highest intellectual life of India? 

On the other hand, the Christian idea of the Incarna- 
tion of Jesus Christ must be understood to connote far 
more than the advent of one of the world's great religious 
leaders. It is not too much to say that "the idea as to 
the Person of Christ, created the Christian religion."^ 
That religion was not built on the beautiful story of one 
who was the fairest of the children of men ; who combined 
in himself all loveliness of personality and all power for 
leadership; who lived a life of stainless purity and died a 
death of ethical majesty; who drew about himself a little 
band of kindred souls and so impregnated them with his 
thought that they became the exponents of his doctrine 
and the heirs of his spirit. The historic Jesus was indeed 
the most beauteous of souls, the most illustrious of ex- 
amples, the most compelling of leaders. Every Christian 
loves that sweetest and best of stories, the story of the 
daily life of Him who went about doing good, blessing 
little children, ministering to the ajfflicted, instructing the 
teachable, expelling devils, forgiving foes, leaving behind 
him a trail of light that time has not extinguished. But 
the Christian religion is built on "deeper foundations 
than admiring love for the ideally beautiful leader, Jesus 
of Nazareth." It is built upon the conviction that Jesus 
of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the Living God ; the 

1 Faiebairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 476. 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 113 

Manifestation of the Eternal, under the form of time and 
in the terms of human action. "Without this belief," to 
use the words of Fairbairn, "the religion could have had 
no existence ; the moment it lived the religion began to 
be. And the process of interpretation was a creative 
process; every stage in the evolution of the thought 
marked a stage in the realisation of the religion. In the 
Synoptic Gospels we have what may be termed the per- 
sonal and subjective religion of Jesus. In the Apostolical 
Epistles the Person is interpreted in relation to the 
religion; the religion becomes more clearly defined, dis- 
tinct in quality, real in character, absolute in authority. 
We see it become, first, different from Judaism; next, 
independent of it ; then, absorbent of all that was perma- 
nent in it and in other religions ; and finally, when Christ 
is conceived in His Divine dignity and pre-eminence, the 
religion appears as universal in its unity as the one God 
is in His sole sovereignty."^ 

It is necessary, then, to differentiate between essential 
Christianity, which involves the worship of Christ as the 
Incarnate Manifestation of the Eternal Principle of Son- 
ship that is in the Deity, and that admiration of Christ 
as a religious leader and social guide which has been so 
generously expressed by many Indians in words alike 
noble in themselves and distinctive of the superb capacity 
in Hinduism for the appreciation of ethical greatness, 
especially when revealed through a life of self-sacrifice. 
Nothing can be more just in itself, more worthy of a true 
soul, more beneficial to society, than to speak well of Jesus 
Christ; to make much of His qualities as a man; to press 
His example upon the attention of the world ; to hold Him 
up as the standard of absolute excellence in conduct for 

iJbid., pp. 476,477. 



114 Barrows Lectures 

all times and all races. The readiness to pay the Christ 
this homage of ethical submission is becoming more gen- 
eral day by day. By common consent those who are the 
truest friends of humanity, who value the individual for 
his own sake and yearn for a better, sweeter social order, 
are turning in admiration to Jesus, whatever their theo- 
logical opinions may be; agreeing that, if we each could 
live the life of Christ, if the world were tuned to the 
spirit of Christ, nothing better could be conceived. This 
recognition of the moral sovereignty of Christ by the best 
minds of many faiths is very beautiful. But the fact that 
He attracts the pure in heart in all nations, religions, and 
social conditions; that the truth and tenderness of His 
words and deeds appeal to men who are as far from one 
another, on other grounds, as the East is from the West, 
forces upon us the enquiry: Is He not more than man? 
Does not the historical fact of Christ carry with it con- 
clusions that open the most fundamental questions of 
religion ? I have alluded to the generous appreciation of 
the ethical teachings of Christ, now happily common in 
the East, that I might more clearly discriminate between 
the homage readily given to Jesus as one of many great 
human leaders, and the high truth which conditions essen- 
tial Christianity ; that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Incar- 
nate Manifestation of the Eternal Principle of Sonship 
that is in the Deity, and that the purpose of this Mani- 
festation is not the founding of a sect, but the redemp- 
tion of the whole world. This being the point of view from 
which I shall present the Incarnation of Christ in the 
succeding lectures, it becomes unnecessary to do any one 
of three things: to consider the antecedent possibility of 
an Incarnation of the Divine; or to debate the relative 
merits of character as between Christ and the incarnations 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 115 

cherished by other faiths ; or to attempt to explain away 
the points of similitude between some religious traditions 
of India, and the words and deeds of the Founder of 
Christianity. 

As to the antecedent possibility of Divine Incarnation, 
he must have remained strangely ignorant of the most 
precious beliefs of India who does not know how im- 
bedded in the religious consciousness is the doctrine of 
incarnation. As to the relative merits of character in 
Christ and other saintly leaders of the East, I am but too 
ready to acknowledge all that can be known of sublimity, 
patience, or love in the lives that are most dear to my 
fellow men. As to the resemblance between some religious 
traditions of India and the words and deeds of Christ, I wel- 
come them. If one has in one's heart a true love for others, 
what can be more gladdening than to be assured that, 
in lands where Christ's blessed feet never trod in the days 
of His flesh, there have been souls that shone with Christ- 
like radiance amid the shadows of earth's grief and pain? 

The proposition that I wish to present, and that I merely 
open in this concluding part of my present lecture, is not 
one that looks to the rivalry of faiths and the exaltation of 
one by the discrediting of others. In such discussions I 
take no interest. I am not here to make dogmatic asser- 
tions, alike irritating and unprofitable. I am here to 
enquire whether there is, or is not, that in Christianity 
which is of universal significance ; whether it is, or is not, 
a Eevelation of God of equal interest to all men, because 
it recognises the solemn realities of spiritual longing and 
aspiration that appear in all the highest forms of religion, 
and gives to the one great, yearning heart of humanity 
an answer that alleviates the mystery of life; that satis- 
fies and inspires the soul; that imparts to personality a 



116 Barrows Lectures 

new meaning, and supplies to effort a new motive. 
Truthfully can I say that my interest in Christianity is 
not a selfish or sectarian interest, I believe it; I love it; 
I think it worth while to travel across the world for the 
purpose of expounding it, not because of what it means 
to me personally, nor because it is the faith of my fathers, 
but solely because I trust that it is of universal significance, 
and not mine, or for me^ in any sense in which it is not my 
brother's and for him. I love it because I have no 
proprietary rights in it and no sectarian claim upon 
its benefits. I love it as I love sunshine and clear air, 
and all the gifts of God that belong to no one, simply 
because they belong to all. I love it as I love liberty and 
progress and the rights of men; because these are uni- 
versals and not particulars. I love it because I believe 
that, essentially, all men are one in their fundamental 
feelings, needs, and aspirations; and because what so 
completely meets the fundamental needs and answers the 
the deepest aspirations of some seems as if it must be 
meant for all ; as if it must be the thing that has come at 
last, after ages of human hope and fear, from the Heart 
of the Good God to satisfy the yearnings and uplift the 
hopes of all His children; as if it must be the crown and 
consummation of all religion, the common goal to which 
our many upward paths have tended, the "one, far off. 
Divine Event, toward which the whole creation moves." 

I have the more courage to speak thus because India 
ever has been the home of thought, where are welcomed 
all serious students of the ultimate problems of life. "In 
no other country," says a great Western scholar, "do we 
find so universally diffused among all classes of the people 
so earnest a spirit of enquiry, so impartial and deep a 
respect for all who are teachers, however contradictory 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 117 

their doctrines may be."^ In such an atmosphere all 
truth-seekers are brethren; and whatsoever anyone may 
say is weighed by all, to see if it contain anght that can 
interpret the mystery of life. The whole world is grap- 
pling with the problem of existence and suffering under 
its burden of destiny. At the heart of the great pre- 
Christian religions is sorrow — the sorrow of being at the 
mercy of forces that whirl one relentlessly upon the wheel 
of life.^ The yearning of the great pre-Christian religions 
is escape — salvation by deliverance from the burden of 
life. To this escape all the ideals and ambitions of these 
religions point. Penance, self-sacrifice, humanitarian ser- 
vice, are all for this, to facilitate the escape of the soul 
from the thralldom of life ; to fly away and be at rest ; to 
go out into the infinite ; to pass through painful reincar- 
nations, along the weary road of self-atonement, leading 
at last to inward peace and unruffled joy. 

These conceptions have in them the note of universality. 
Beneath ethnic differentiations they contain great aspects 
of experience common to all men. And by their sad 
consistency in treating man as the hopeless object of 
forces with which he cannot cope and from which he 
longs to escape, they testify to the one profoundest defi- 
ciency in human life — the lack of power. Who does not 
long for power — to be something more than the passive 
slave of life, something more than a struggling swimmer 
in the ocean of overwhelming fatality? Who does not 
dream sometimes of being as one of the gods — to create; 
to do; to accomplish; to turn life into action, fruitful, 
blessed action; not mere endurance, praying for escape? 
The Incarnation of the Son of God is the answer given at 
length to this yearning of humanity. In Christ God 

iRhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 26. ^Ibid., p. 182. 



118 Barrows Lectures 

appears, to bring new truth to light ; truth of which many 
beforetime had prophetic glimpses; for which the world 
was waiting, as the sick wait for the morning; but which 
is declared and consummated only in the Incarnation of 
the Eternal Word. What the world has lacked has been 
power to cope with the mystery of existence, and to over- 
come the forces that are making existence a weary round 
of sorrow and discouragement. Christianity's message is 
the message of power; power that can make all things 
new; power that can give a new meaning and outlook to 
life itself; power that can create in man a new purpose 
and clothe him with an immediate and joyful salvation, 
so that he need no longer look upon the world with de- 
spair, nor feel that he is condemned to pay the penalty 
of his errours in long and painful reincarnations, but can 
be brought now into immediate union with God, and 
invested with the power of an indissoluble life. 

But, in order to receive the gift of power, one must 
first understand the conditions existing in the world that 
prevent power and make man the passive slave of hinder- 
ing forces. Are they essential conditions? Is it normal 
that man shall be passive? Is this all that our present 
life means, the pitiless revolution of a wheel of destiny? 
Or is this helplessness of man a perversion of the normal 
order, produced by causes that can be known and con- 
quered? Until the Incarnation of the Son of God, men 
had worked at that question, to reach only the answer of 
pessimism: Life a mere treadmill, a weary path; Man a 
poor pilgrim ; struggling through the world, seeking escape 
by a salvation that means deliverance from life. 

Then came the Incarnation, and, with it, the new answer 
to the problem of existence: "I am come, not to deliver 
you from life, but that ye might have life, and that ye 



Jesus Christ the Supreme Manifestation of God 119 

might have it more abundantly."^ It is with this message 
that I would deal in the remaining lectures of this course ; 
not with superficial comparisons of Christ and other world- 
leaders ; not with controversial intricacies of doctrine ; but 
with things far greater; things universal, human. Does 
Christ bring that for which the ages have been searching ? 
Does He redeem man by redeeming life, by making life a 
new thing ? Does he give power that all men can use and 
by which life is changed for all men, Eastern or Western ? 
These are the questions upon which Christianity stands 
or falls as a message of universal import. And these are 
the questions that are met and answered in the Incarnation 
of the Son of God, and there only. In the remaining 
lectures I shall attempt to set before you the answers that 
issue from the Incarnation of Christ. I shall seek to show 
that it may be regarded as a revelation of the character 
of God, whereby we know that it is nothing in God that 
is holding the world back. He is not against man. He 
is not indifferent, nor vindictive, nor capricious. He is all 
that love can be. I shall seek to show that the Incarnation 
may be looked on as a revelation of the Ideal Life; of 
what man is meant to be; not a sorrowing helpless creature, 
but a strong son of God; not a self-centred creature, but 
a minister of helpfulness inspired by holy love for others. 
I shall seek to show that the Incarnation reveals the love 
of God, in the terms of suffering and sacrifice ; and that 
salvation, seen in the light of that Incarnate Sacrifice, 
means, not escape from life, but deliverance from sin, 
which curses life and holds it down; and the restoration 
of life to its normal uses and powers in immediate union 
with the life of God. 

1 Cf. John 10 : 10. 



FOURTH LECTURE 

THE SIN OF MAN AND THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST 
INTERPRETED BY CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

We have reached, in the discussion of our subject, that 
most vital stage of the argument where the moral rela- 
tions of Christianity to the lives of men must engage our 
attention, and the problems of evil and good must be con- 
sidered. I have to speak therefore of the Sin of Man and 
the Sacrifice of Christ. 

When, more than three years ago, I was appointed to 
this Lectureship, I entered upon the long and arduous 
course of preparation in an attitude of reverence toward 
non-Christian faiths. I desired to be a humble learner 
from systems of belief that commanded the allegiance of 
immense numbers of my fellow-men, and that represented 
the insight, research, and aspiration of long lines of emi- 
nent and saintly personages. I believed that such an 
attitude was in accord with the Spirit of Christ, and be- 
coming on the part of the seeker for truth. The results 
have more than justified my anticipations. Some of the 
religious conceptions of non-Christian faiths have im- 
pressed themselves upon me by their majestic propor- 
tions; and some have presented nobler embodiments of 
certain fundamental ideas of Christianity than one finds 
in the conventional Christian thought of the West". From 
time to time, in this course of preparation, the conviction 
has recurred with increasing definiteness that the East 
could, if it would, give more adequate expression to 
Christianity than the West ever has given; that India 
might, if it would, express the innermost secret of Christ 
with an exaltation of tone, an emancipation from the 

120 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 121 

thralldom of things visible, a grasp on the eternal, the 
invisible, the imperishable, never yet attained by the aver- 
age thought of Europe and America. Firmly I believe 
that the greatness of essential Christianity not yet has 
adequately been expressed, and never can be, until the 
East co-operates in that expression and, as the teacher of 
the West, contributes elements of thought and feeling 
comparatively lacking there. 

Such being my attitude toward non-Christian beliefs, 
it is not surprising that I am indebted to them for cer- 
tain suggestions in connection with my present attempt 
to speak of sin from a Christian point of view. Grate- 
fully I acknowledge that the influence of Eastern thought 
has enlarged my own view of the scope and content of 
Christian truth, and has deepened my conviction of its 
intrinsic universality, and of the inestimable service in 
the interpretation of it that may be rendered by Oriental 
philosophy and Oriental example, should the East ever 
join the West in acknowledging the world-wide relation- 
ship of Jesus Christ. 

The Christian religion is one with other forms of faith 
in recognising the fact of sin and in dealing with it. 
Many religions recognise sin. The conceptions of its na- 
ture, the theories of its results, the methods of dealing 
with it, vary ; the fact is one. An American writer has 
said: "Sin gives to life its deepest tragic quality. The 
amount of evil that a study of familiar facts would bring 
to light is utterly appalling. It is true that much good 
would also be found, and that the responsibility of the 
evil is often divided between him who commits it and the 
ancestors who have made him what he is. It is true also 
that some part of the evil that is commonly called sin is 
rightly chargeable to imperfection or immaturity, or igno- 



122 Barrows Lectures 

rance; nevertheless observation shows that sin is the 
abiding habit of the race. Beginning without theory or 
special definition, we find moral evil characteristic of 
mankind. Even if we never learned the origin of sin 
and were always uncertain about the philosophy of it, 
these facts would remain. Sin is an observed fact. 
Theology encounters it not as an element in some theory, 
but as a vast and terrible reality. Many Christians think 
of sin chiefly as a matter of doctrine or as a truth opened 
to us by revelation. This is a mistake indeed: sin is an 
ancient and ever-present fact."^ 

It is obvious that our conceptions of the nature of sin 
must be determined by our conceptions of the nature of 
God and of finite personality. As we think of God and 
and as we think of ourselves, so shall we think of sin. 
If God is not personal, but an impersonal Absolute; if 
finite personality is illusory and not real ; or if God and 
self alike are delusions, and the end of existence is the 
extinction of a temporary, fleeting individuality, all inter- 
pretations of the idea of sin, and of the antecedent prob- 
lem of evil, are conditioned by these premises. If, on 
the other hand, God is personal and the finite self is an 
actual differentiation of the Absolute, possessing the 
qualities of individuality, sin takes on other meanings and 
relations, and a study of it opens moral problems and 
moral possibilities that are distinctive. These are the 
matters with which I would deal in this lecture ; approach- 
ing them in the spirit of one who longs to have the co- 
operation of Eastern thinkers in sounding the depths of 
a theory of sin and redemption which shall be universal 
in its application and rich with suggestion for the better- 
ment and sanctification of life. 

1 Clarke, Outline of Christian Theology, p. 230. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 123 

The Christian Religion concerns itself primarily with 
the fact of sin; and its central message to humanity is 
deliverance from sin through a Saviour, which is Christ 
the Lord. In the brief and crowded ministry of Christ 
upon earth, no moment is more distinctly typical of the 
attitude of Christianity toward mankind than that in 
which He surveys Jerusalem from the Bethany road and 
weeps over it. It is the beginning of the week of His 
final sufferings. With Divine prescience He realises that 
the supreme hour of the Sacrifice is near. Arrayed in the 
qualities of courage, patience, holiness, and love, He pre- 
pares to announce His presence in the midst of those who, 
blinded by prejudice, are incapable of recognising the 
benignity of His purpose. He approaches the city, riding 
upon an ass; more kingly in His simplicity of habit than 
if encumbered with the splendours of a royal progress. 
Through that strangely keen insight wherewith common 
minds sometimes detect truths unnoticed by the wise, the 
multitude preceive in Him their friend, and surround Him 
with touching acclamations. Palm branches and the gar- 
ments of loving men carpet the path whereon He travels. 
Benedictions ascend toward Him from the crowd. At 
length He reaches the point where breaks upon His view 
Jerusalem, the city of a thousand divine privileges and 
sacred associations. Its glorious walls, its shining palaces, 
confront Him. But with the inward vision of His dis- 
cerning spirit He sees the mistaken judgment, the per- 
verted will, the pride, the unreality, the wrong, that dwell 
in self -destroying security within those walls; and from 
the depths of a heart that meets ignorance with compas- 
sion, hatred with forgiveness, sin with sacrifice, sorrow 
wells and blinds with tears the eyes of Holy Love. 

Such is the tenderness of Christianity as it regards a 



124 Barrows Lectures 

world endowed with divine possibilities, yet devastated by 
sin. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of Christianity. 
Like Christ, its attitude toward the world is an attitude of 
love, of sorrow, of redeeming effort, of immortal hope. 
Like Him, it desires that all men shall be saved from 
destructive influences and come to the knowledge of the 
truth. Like Him, it finds in sin the cause of life's rest- 
lessness and wretchedness. Like Him, its chief concern 
is the dissolution of the power of sin ; the deliverance and 
forgiveness of the sinful; the transformation of life to 
more abundant self-realisation. 

In order to understand why sin is recognised in Chris- 
tian thought as a fact of such momentous import, one 
must call to mind the Christian view of God and of the 
relation of good and evil. The idea of God connotes in 
Christian thought Infinite Personality. This has been 
set forth at length in an earlier lecture. The Christian, 
like the Hindu, approaches the idea of God by the path 
of negation — the negation of finite differences. The first 
philosophical step toward God is to differentiate between 
Him and the transitory things that are not He. The 
formula "not that — not that" belongs to the one universal 
vocabulary of true theistic science. Pressing past the 
limitations of the finite, we arrive at that pure, unqualified 
negation which is the symbol of Infinity. But when 
Christian thought arrives at that pure, unqualified nega- 
tion, it insists on going farther. It cannot regard an 
Infinite Negative as the highest possible expression of the 
idea of God. It conceives a yet higher expression, which 
is an Infinite Positive completing the Infinite Negative 
by differentiations within itself whereby self-realisation 
becomes possible and personality emerges. To think of 
God as impersonal essence without the qualifying attri- 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 125 

butes of personality seems to the Christian to limit the 
Infinite by denying Him the capacity for self-knowledge 
and self-expression that is enjoyed by finite intelligences. 
The simplicity of impersonal essence, attained by the 
negation of attributes, is felt to be less comprehensive 
and all-sufficient than the wealth of personality attained 
through diflPerentiation. God is conceived as realising 
Himself within the depths of His own infinity through 
those differentiations which no mortal mind can fathom, 
yet which mortal faith can adore as Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit. 

It is by the development of this idea of Infinite Per- 
sonality as the highest conception of God that Christian 
philosophy accounts for such a phenomenon as the finite 
spirit of man. The self-realisation of an Infinite God 
demands the existence of finite intelligences in corre- 
spondence with His own. A solitary God, who represents 
in his own unqualified essence the totality of being, seems 
to the Christian a conception that requires modification 
in order to raise it to the terms of infinity. An all- 
comprehending God must realise Himself through the 
outgoings of His thought upon limited beings who can be 
the objects of certain manifestations of love and righteous- 
ness, that are necessary elements of perfect character. 
So man is the offspring of God : finite intelligence becomes 
existent, not for the limitation, but for the expression of 
Infinite character. Man is like God ; he is a partaker of the 
Divine nature. Man is necessary to God, even as God is 
necessary to man. God completes Himself through man, 
as Light and as Love. Man completes himself in God; 
and the seal and evidence of this mystical fellowship of the 
divine in and with the human is the Incarnation of the 
Eternal Logos, who, in the fullness of time, is made flesh 



126 Barrows Lectures 

and dwells visibly for a season, in form and fellowship 
with man. Such a conception of God's personality in Him- 
self, and in His relation to man, invests the phenomenon 
of sin with extraordinary significance, and requires an 
interpretation of its nature that shall be compatible with 
that oneness of life whereby man is the offspring of God. 

In order to such an interpretation of sin as these condi- 
tions demand, it is necessary also to refer to the Christian 
view of the relation of good and evil. I look with rever- 
ence upon the conclusions reached by the great construct- 
ive thinkers of pre-Christian faiths, who, beholding the 
universality of evil and" its effects upon life, have sought 
to state the problems of existence in terms that should 
assuage the sorrow and revive the hope of a weary world. 
As, with a sympathetic mind, I study the methods whereby, 
in the philosophies of Zarathushtra, of the Buddha, and 
of the Vedanta, the fact of evil is related to life, it is easy 
for me to realise the value of these interpretations for 
those who can receive them; for in them I perceive the 
foreshadowing of thoughts substantially reaffirmed in my 
own Christian consciousness. 

When the Zarathushtrian tells me of a primeval prin- 
ciple of evil ever contesting the principle of good, ever 
bringing conflict into the moral universe and into the life 
of the individual believer ; he says that which all Christian 
experience verifies, from the present hour back to St. Paul, 
who testified, in language that might have been uttered 
by a Persian seeker after righteousness: "The good that 
I would I do not, but the evil which I would not that I 
practise. I find then the law that, to me who would do 
good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after 
the inward man ; but I see a different law in my members, 
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 127 

into captivity under the law of sin which is in my mem- 
bers. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me 
out of the body of this death?"' 

When the disciple of the Buddha, seeking along the 
Noble Path deliverance from the wheel of rebirth and 
from the sorrow inherent in individuality, warns me against 
the delusion of grasping after the fleeting and illusory 
things of this existence ; when he tells me that the sorrow 
and evil of life spring from this grasping effort to realise 
individuality through attachment to worldly things; I 
know that he speaks truth, and interprets to me a principle 
that lives in the very soul of Christianity, though little 
understood by many of its western followers: even the 
transitory and illusory nature of the world. There are 
words in the mouths of Christian Apostles that reflect the 
spirit of the Buddha. "The world passeth away and 
the lust thereof."^ "And those that use this world as not 
abusing it; for the fashion of this world passeth away.'" 
"We look not at the things which are seen, but at the 
things which are not seen; for the things which are 
seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are 
eternal."* 

When the Hindu unfolds to me the doctrine of Karma, 
wherein evil is seen as the fruit and sequence of former 
action — a doctrine, permit me to say, that has developed 
in Hindu character some of its finest qualities, especially 
an uncomplaining submission to evil as the just reward of 
wrong-doing, and a readiness to face without shrinking 
the bitter penalty of one's former sins — he tells me of that 
which belongs to the essence of Christian thought. The 
Karma of Hinduism, "the unbroken chain of cause and 

1 Eom. 7 : 19-24. 2 1 John 2 : 17. 

31 Cor, 7:31. *2 Cor. 4:18. 



128 Barrows Lectures 

effect, in which every link depends on the link that pre- 
cedes it ; out of which no link can drop, for law is invio- 
lable,"^ has its counterpart in the ethics of Christianity: 
"Be not deceived; Grod is not mocked: for whatsoever a 
man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth 
unto his own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but 
he that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life 
everlasting."^ The principle of Karma as it enters into 
Christianity never yet has found adequate expression in 
the Christian life of the West. The righteousness of cause 
and effect in a moral order, the justice of suffering as a 
sequence of sin, the nobleness of submission to retributive 
pain, have not duly tempered Western character nor curbed 
the pride of its individualism. The consequences of action 
sit too lightly on the Western conscience. The West needs 
the grave and ancient East to interpret this element of 
Christianity to those who long have called themselves 
Christian. I would to God that the East were Christian, 
for then at last the West might learn, by the power of a 
great example, to realise personal responsibility and the 
inevitable certainty of the wages of sin. 

But while the halting and inconsequent practices of 
the West have but faintly set forth the scope and content 
of the Christian religion in its view of moral evil, I will 
ask you to remember that in these lectures I am not offer- 
ing the West as an illustration of what Christianity is or 
teaches ; I am not boasting of the West as the product of 
Christian ideas; I am not attempting to impose a Chris- 
tianised West upon an unwilling or scornful East. Far 
higher and more rational is my effort. I am seeking your 
co-operation in the study of what, intrinsically, is world- 

1 Slateb, Higher Hinduism^ p. 199 (quoting Mrs. Besant). 

2 Gal. 6: 7, 8. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 129 

wide in the Christian system; I am enquiring into its 
practical contributions to the value of life ; I am asking if 
its forms of thought may possibly give expression to the 
noblest religious aspirations of India and of the world. 

To ascertain this, it is necessary to reflect upon the 
attitude of essential Christianity toward moral evil. It 
does not regard moral evil as a metaphysical necessity, 
inherent in the nature of things, so that the existence of 
evil is necessary in order to the existence of good, and the 
estate of sin the condition determining the evolution of 
virtue. While recognising that some of the noblest attri- 
butes of character may emerge in the struggle of the soul 
with sin, it refuses to believe that a Holy God, in order to 
develop righteous character in man, necessitates moral 
antecedents unethical in themselves, and incompatible 
with Divine righteousness. Nor does the Christian reli- 
gion locate the seat of evil in the region of physical being, 
as if affirming that matter is in itself evil and spirit good. 
While recognising the evils arising through the mediation 
of the flesh, its passions and its tendencies, and while 
sympathising with man in his struggle to bring the 
imperious impulses of the flesh under proper restraint, it 
refuses to grant the intrinsic evil of any part of that sys- 
tem of nature which owes its existence to the utterly good 
and loving God.^ 

Essential Christianity locates the seat of moral evil in 
the will of man. Without too sharply sundering the 
intellect from the will, in our study of this subject, it 
may be said that the will is the regal element of per- 
sonality; its existence and its force are impressed upon 
the individual every moment. This power *'by which man 

IC/. Westcott, Epistles of St. John, note, pp. 37-40; CiiARKE, Outline of 
Christian Theology, pp. 231-39 ; Sri Pabananda, Commentary on St. John, pp. 49, 
50, 166. 



130 Barroivs Lectures 

determines whether and how he shall act, and by which 
he puts forth his energy in action," commands the whole 
range of self-knowledge and self-expression. In the last 
analysis, it is not our feelings that control us; it is not 
our thoughts and conceptions that determine what we 
shall be and do; it is our wills. ^ "The willing depart- 
ment of our nature," says a great living psychologist, 
"dominates both the conceiving department and the 
feeling department."^ 

A brief reflection upon the will as we know it within 
ourselves will show the relation of the will to conduct. 
The freedom of the will is the birthright of the normal 
human being. By the same power of self-consciousness 
wherewith he knows himself as existing, he knows himself 
as free — free to choose, free to refuse, free to act, free to 
refrain from action. Obviously this freedom is not 
unlimited. While we are certain that in the centre of 
our being we hold the royal prerogative of determining 
what we will do or not do, we are equally certain that in 
the exercise of that prerogative we are influenced by many 
considerations; some wholly exterior to ourselves, some 
arising in other departments of our personality. We 
know that our decisions are affected from without by the 
facts of life that surround us, by knowledge that we may 
have acquired through previous contact with those facts, 
or by persons who exert an influence over our feelings or 
our movements. We know also that our decisions are 
promoted — sometimes they seem almost to be necessi- 
tated — by forces at work within ourselves: the rush of 
physical impulse; the current of intellectual tendency; 
the breathing of the Spirit of God; the pressure of the 

1 Cf. KOYCE, The World and the Individual, pp. 434-37. 

2 James, The Will to Believe, p. 114. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 131 

Will of God. These are limitations imposed upon the 
will; factors that make the problem of volition more 
complex. 

Yet, in the last analysis, our wills are ours.^ Within 
all limitations and suggestions, external and internal, is 
the royal presence-chamber of the Will, the throne-room 
of the volitional Ego, where the finite self asserts its 
right of individuality and vindicates its freedom. It is 
there, at that final seat and centre of personality, that 
Christianity locates the moral evil of human life and finds 
the fountain-head of sin. I have called the will the most 
regal element of personality. It is such because its 
normal function is the self-assertion of the ego. The 
self-assertion of the ego is not sin. It is the exercise of 
man's most godlike prerogative. Never are we more 
worthy of our Divine lineage than in the instant of voli- 
tion ; for in that act the finite child of the Infinite Father 
intuitively discloses its high parentage and corroborates 
its kinship with the Eternal Mind. Nor does the essence 
of sin consist in the fact that this ego, which on the one 
hand is affiliated with God, is on the other hand clothed 
in a physical nature shared with lower animals and con- 
taining animalistic propensities. The animalistic instincts 
of the human being are, in their original and unperverted 
forms, normal, and consistent with the highest ethical 
life. The morality of the will, with its two ethical 
products, righteousness and sin, issues not from the fact 
of volition per se, but from the antecedent fact that there 
is an ideal order of being, a Divine order which is the 
absolute standard, and with which the finite will is in a 
relation either of harmony or of antagonism. Righteous- 
ness is the self-assertion of the finite ego in accord with 

1 Cf. Tennyson, In Memoriam. 



132 Barrows Lectures 

the Divine order of being. Take, for example, a sin of 
the flesh — an illicit and destructive act of indulgence, a 
self-abandonment to animalistic impulse; the sin of that 
act is not chiefly in the temporary domination of a bodily 
passion, but in the self-assertion of the ego, under the 
influence of an animalistic impulse, on the side of that 
which violates, affronts, and contravenes the Divine order 
of being. *'Sin," says one who has thought deeply on 
these matters, "does not dwell in the fact that man still 
retains a nature akin to that of the animals below him, 
but in this, that the nature that is akin to God yields to 
the nature that is common to man and beasts."^ *'Sin," 
says another, "is the turning of a light brighter than the 
sun into darkness ; the squandering or bartering away of 
a boundless wealth ; the suicidal abasement, to the things 
that perish, of a nature destined by its constitution and 
structure for participation in the very being and blessed- 
ness of God." ^ 

The Christian religion concerns itself primarily with 
this fact of sin, this universal and perpetual self-assertion 
of the finite ego, as against the Divine order of being. It 
is a religion for the sinful, to convince them of the fact of 
sin; to interpret to them its nature; to announce a 
Redeemer and Deliverer who is able to save from sin by 
lifting the soul above its power and bringing man back 
into normal relation with God. "I came," says Christ, 
"not to call the righteous, but sinners."^ "The Son of 
Man came to seek and to save that which was lost."* 

The point of view from which Christianity regards the 
phenomenon of sin is to be considered. It contains three 

1 Claeke, Outline of Christian Theology; see the chapter on "Sin." 

2 J. Caied, Fundamentals of Christianity, Vol. II. p. 122. 

3 Matt. 9:13. *Lukel9:10. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 133 

elements: an appreciation of the Divine order of the uni- 
verse as an expression of the love of God for man; an 
appreciation of the greatness of man as a being capable 
of asserting himself against the Divine order; an appre- 
ciation of the sorrowful and destructive results of the 
alienation of the finite ego from the benign and holy will 
of God. 

From the Christian point of view the whole problem of 
man's ethical struggle, and of man's sin, rests on the 
assumption that God is personal and God is good. The 
Divine Essence is not an impersonal absolute existing 
without qualities. It is Infinite Life clothed with illus- 
trious attributes of moral character : God is the perfection 
of self-conscious being. In Him is unsearchable wisdom, 
wherein is no possibility of errour, no alloy of prejudice; 
perfect knowledge, beholding the end from the beginning ; 
justice, clear as the noonday, calm as eternity; faithful- 
ness like the great mountains ; holiness that cannot be 
tempted with evil, neither tempteth any man ; purity that 
will not countenance anything that defileth or maketh a 
lie ; power conditioned only by the beneficence of the 
Divine will and the righteousness of the Divine character ; 
mercy like the wideness of the sea ; love that suffereth 
long and is kind. This God, in whom all perfections 
meet, stands toward man in the attitude of a father toward 
a child. The love of the Infinite Heart goes out to man as 
that of the parent toward its offspring. The thought of 
the Infinite Mind on behalf of man is altogether that of 
beneficent desire — the will of goodness that ordains for 
the object of its affection all that is best, highest, most 
conducive of happiness and well-being. The Christian 
conception of Divine law is not the yoke of tyranny and 
oppression, the cynical statute of the selfish despot. 



134 Barrows Lectures 

Divine law is the continuous expression of the mind of 
love ; the unfolding of an ideal order, by perfect corre- 
spondence with which man shall find the clue to his own 
existence ; the line of his own best development ; the path 
of peace. It cannot be too clearly pointed out that this is 
the Christian view of God's attitude toward man. Extra- 
ordinary misconceptions on this point have prevailed. 
Sectarian accentuations of detail have added to the force 
of these misconceptions ; representing God, now in the 
aspect of inscrutable fate, sweeping men onward by a 
resistless tide of destiny ; now in the attitude of judicial 
vengeance, to be propitiated by the sacrifice of an innocent 
victim. Ignoring these misconceptions and rising to the 
truth, we find an Infinite Personality of Holy Love 
expressing itself through an ideal order of the universe, 
and inviting men to attain complete realisation and self- 
development through voluntary correspondence with that 
ideal order. 

The point of view from which Christianity regards the 
phenomenon of sin is characterised also by appreciation 
of the greatness of man as a being capable of asserting 
himself against the Divine order. Sin, in a truly Chris- 
tian philosophy of existence, is not a mere stepping-stone 
to righteousness, the indispensable ethical routine through 
which man passes from the ignorance of innocency to 
moral self-realisation ; nor is sin a mere disease persisting 
in the body of humanity and prolonging its taint in the 
blood of a thousand generations. From the Christian 
point of view, sin is sin because it involves moral volition; 
the most regal of human attributes. The instrument of 
sin is that in man which is most evidently akin to God, 
the moral self-assertion of the ego. 

If man were like the beasts that perish, he could not 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 135 

sin; but, because there is in him the very seed and 
essence of God, because his individuality is the reflection 
and image of the Divine individuality, therefore can he 
assert himself against the Divine order. Only when we 
consider this can we understand why Christianity concerns 
itself so enormously with the fact of sin, so that it may be 
called a religion for the sinful ; and why Christ comes, not 
as the leader of an esoteric cult, not as the teacher of a 
philosophical system, not as the high-priest of a new 
ritual; but as the Saviour of sinners. "This," cries the 
Apostle "is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, 
that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."^ 
Sin darkly and terribly attests the greatness of man. He 
is so truly the offspring of God that he can resist the 
Divine order of life, and misapply it to his own destruc- 
tion. In the sinner God sees His own child using the 
regal gift of moral self-assertion in the denial of the 
Divine order; turning his best into his worst; calling evil 
good and good evil. Sin therefore becomes the central 
fact in human life, and the love that found expression in 
making man in the image of God finds new expression in 
the effort to save the thing made from its own unmaking. 
To this appreciation of the Divine order of the uni- 
verse as an expression of the love of God for man, and of 
the greatness of man as a being capable of asserting him- 
self against that order, the Christian view of sin adds 
one further element of deep significance — an appreciation 
of the sorrowful and destructive results of the alienation 
of the finite ego from the benign and holy will of God. 
The essence of sin being the estrangement of man from 
God through the self-assertion of the human will, in a 
refusal to accept a Divine order of life, sin is regarded as 

1 1 Tim. 1 : 15. 



136 Barrows Lectures 

abnormal, as the violation of our true nature, not the 
expression of it. We are God's offspring, inheriting His 
nature, capable of correspondence with Him in will and 
act. When, instead of this correspondence, there are 
estrangement and alienation, insubordinate and revolu- 
tionary purpose, the whole order of life is dislocated, 
precipitating on all sides consequences ruinous and 
melancholy in proportion to the magnitude of the 
interests involved. Such is the Christian conception of 
sin. Sin is not a necessary part of the economy of life, 
the shadow cast by righteousness ; it is not a mere failure 
to attain the ideal, a mere hereditary disease, a dreary 
legacy from the past. Sin is abnormality, dislocation of 
the natural order, lawlessness, the denial of the Divine 
sovereignty by the finite ego. I have been much im- 
pressed by seeing this essentially Christian view of sin 
corroborated by a Hindu scholar of Ceylon, who, com- 
menting impressively on the Christian Gospel of St. John 
declares: "The sense of sin is the consciousness of non- 
conformity to law."^ 

If Christianity has any distinctive contributions to 
make to the religious experience of the world, surely 
one of them is its revelation of the nature and effects of 
sin. I respect all that the non-Christian faiths have con- 
tributed to this subject; doubtless every point of view 
may discover some new aspect of a theme so vast, but it 
seems to me that the unfoldings of Christianity concern- 
ing sin, the light they throw on some of the darkest 
problems of mortal existence, and the verifications of 
those unfoldings through the experience of innumerable 
Christians, are worthy of unprejudiced examination by 
all who feel the sorrow of human life and long for its 

ISei Parananda, Commentary on St. John's Gospel, p. 50. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 137 

alleviation. Christianity, starting from the premise that 
sin is an abnormal estrangement of the finite ego from 
the Infinite Self, discovers that sin becomes more than a 
succession of acts of erroneous self-assertion ; it may- 
deepen into a permanent attitude of the will ; a constitu- 
tional state of character ; a deliberate and habitual aliena- 
tion from the life of God. It finds that that alienation 
may pass from non-repentance to insensibility; the con- 
science being seared as with a hot iron, and the will of 
the ego becoming a persistent force, working for the 
interruption and dislocation of the Divine order. To 
make these statements concerning sin in a formal and 
academic way is one thing; to realise what they imply 
for the individual and for the world is quite another 
thing, the peculiar product of Christian experience. 

For it may be said that the first stages of the Christian 
life involve new and heart-searching insights into the 
nature and vastness of sin ; and the progress of Christian 
experience almost may be measured by its deepening 
appreciation of what it means to be alienated from the 
life of God by wicked works. If a Christian should 
venture, as I do at this present, to report to his brother- 
men some of the things made clear to him by experience 
concerning the nature of sin, it must not be supposed 
that he is claiming either superior knowledge or superior 
sanctity. On the contrary, in so far as his Christian 
experience has been real, it has destroyed within him all 
sense of personal merit; has deepened his feeling of 
un worthiness ; has rebuked his religious pride; has 
chastened and subdued his spirit; has brought him in 
contrition and submission to the feet of Christ, the 
Redeemer of the sinful. 

Perhaps the first effect of Christianity upon one who 



138 Barrows Lectures 

receives its message concerning sin is to differentiate sin 
from outward and ceremonial uncleanness, and to locate 
it in the very citadel of selfhood, as a moral self-assertion 
of the ego against the holy will of God. Christianity by 
no means despises ceremonial propriety, nor denies that 
one may find moral inspiration in conformity to the out- 
ward letter of a ritual law; yet one of the most explicit 
teachings of Christ is that ceremonial propriety is but the 
outward means to the inward and spiritual end, and that 
sin and righteousness exist in the inward life toward God. 
Sternly He rebukes the Pharisees who had lost the inward 
sense of right in the outward function of ritual: "Woe 
unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe 
mint and anise and cummin and have left undone the 
weightier matters of the law; judgment and mercy and 
faith; but these ye ought to have done and not to have 
left the other undone."^ 

When this transfer of the idea of sin from the outward 
to the inward life has taken place, then begin in the soul 
of a man the unf oldings of Christianity as to the nature 
and effects of moral evil. The essence of sin having been 
realised as the self-assertion of the finite will against the 
Divine order of life, the significance of that erroneous 
self-assertion is made plain by the Spirit of God to the 
awakened conscience and the illuminated mind. Sin is 
seen in its relation to God; in its relation to self; in its 
relation to society. The act and the attitude of human 
sin bring the sinner into a relation with God whereof the 
distinctive notes are selfishness and the denial of sover- 
eignty. Sin, in the last analysis, is selfishness — the 
self-coronation of the finite ego as against the all-loving 
purpose of God. As such it is the denial of sovereignty. 

1 Matt. 23:23. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 139 

All that God is goes for nothing at the imperious judg- 
ment-seat of passionate self-will. The far-reaching wis- 
dom of the Infinite Mind, wherein abide the counsels of 
eternal perfection ; the absolute righteousness of purpose, 
incapable of the smallest defection from virtue ; the 
rational order of nature, conceived and ordained as the 
method of a successful universe ; the Fatherly love, warm 
with beneficence and sympathy; the holy authority to 
guide and to govern — all of these are over- weighed 
by passionate desire, all disowned and repudiated in 
the interest of irresponsible self-assertion. Such is 
the sin of the individual in its relation to God: the 
triumph of the abnormal. We have seen that the evolu- 
tion of the finite spirit from the Infinite Being is for the 
complete self-realisation of the Divine nature, that God 
may find perfect self-expression through the outgoings of 
His love upon finite intelligence ; we have seen that man 
is endowed with attributes of personality that find com- 
plete expression only in communion with God, and that 
the normal order involves perfect correspondence and 
unity of the human and the Divine. Behold then in sin 
the disruption of this order, the dislocation of this rela- 
'tionship, the substitution of a disintegrating selfishness 
for the correspondence of love. 

Sin is revealed through Christian experience in its 
relation to the sinner himself, as well as in its relation to 
God. The incentive to sin is some supposed good. 
When the finite ego asserts itself in moral choices that 
violate the Divine order of life, it does so because influ- 
ences acting from within or from without have made sug- 
gestions suffi ciently powerful to induce the repudiation of 
that Divine order. A life wherein sin has become more 
than an occasional act, even a quality of character, a 



140 Barrows Lectures 

constitutional mental attitude, learns to call evil its good ; 
to love darkness rather than light; to confirm by in- 
numerable repetitions its rejection of the Divine order ; to 
harden its heart against God. But when the power of 
essential Christianity lays hold of such a life, a mighty 
self-revelation ensues; the soul long dead in trespasses 
awakes to righteousness ; scales fall from the moral vision ; 
and sin, which once, under the illusions of passion, seemed 
like an angel of light leading on to liberty, now is seen 
to be man's most insidious enemy, seducing him through 
the misapplication of his powers to his own humiliation, 
sorrow, and destruction. In the light of Christian ex- 
perience every sin is seen to have been a blow dealt against 
oneself. " He that sinneth [against the Divine Wisdom] 
wrongeth his own soul."^ As the essence of sin consists 
in the perverse self-assertion of the finite ego, so every 
thought, every word, every deed of sin is in the nature of 
a perversion of self to wrong uses, and all perversion 
carries with it the curse of abnormality. Sin is a denial 
of the sovereignty of God; but it is also an assault upon 
the integrity of self. 

In the light of Christian experience sin is seen also as 
a barrier in the way of good. "Your sins," says an an- 
cient Scripture, "have withholden good things from you."' 
Terrible verifications of that saying are made by those 
who, illuminated at last by the power of Christianity, 
look back on years of self-will, spent in the interest of 
egoistic ends and in revolt against the Divine order of 
life. The incentive to sin was the pursuit of fancied 
good; but, in the clearer light that attends an awakened 
conscience, the mad self-assertion of the ego is seen to 
have worked for the narrowing of life ; for the dwarfing 

1 Prov. 8 : 36. 2 Jeremiah 5 : 25. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 141 

of its powers; for the shutting out of richer good and 
loftier attainment that might have come along the lines 
of the Divine order. Too late, alas! many find how 
much more beautiful and heroic life might have been had 
self-will not broken away from the Fatherly will of God to 
be a law unto itself; had passionate impulse not sold the 
birthright of a son of God for brief indulgence to be 
paid for in long repentance and bitterness of soul. None 
can estimate the good that is lost to man, that becomes 
inaccessible and impossible, by reason of sin. All the 
ghastly revenges of wrong-doing that are working them- 
selves out in every land and under every religion, for those 
who have chosen to ignore the law that whatsoever a man 
soweth that shall he also reap, though they may be more 
obvious, are not more terrible than the barriers against 
good, against the vigour of health, and the exhilaration of 
righteous action, and the joy of purity, and the sunshine 
of the favour of God, that we are piling up around our- 
selves by our sins. 

But, from the point of view of Christianity, the dark 
indictment of sin is not yet fully drawn. When we have 
considered sin, in its relation to God, as the essence of 
selfishness and repudiation of sovereignty ; and, in its re- 
lation to the sinner himself, as a blow dealt at his own 
life, a barrier between him and good, we have not ex- 
hausted the possibilities of moral evil. Another sphere 
of influence remains, possibly the most terrible, certainly 
the most pathetic. I mean the sin of individuals in its 
relation to other individuals and to society. If sin were 
a taint within the life only of him who sins, a secret of 
iniquity shut up within the single soul, a story of sorrow 
closing at the grave and sealed up in the tomb of the 
dead, human history would be far less terrible than it is. 



142 Barrows Lectures 

But sin is an infection spread by the one among the many ; 
a plague smiting the innocent as well as the guilty ; a 
curse harrowing children and children's children with their 
fathers' iniquity ; a blight so subtle, so persistent, so ex- 
pansive that communities and races and nations may reap 
a harvest of injustice and sorrow from the seed-sowing 
of unrighteousness by the hands of a few evil leaders. 
Men sin and repent ; but the self -propagating fruit of 
their wrongs may be beyond recall, rooted irrevocably in 
other lives. Men sin and die ; but their crimes survive, 
in a malignant immortality of consequences. 

It is impossible for a disciple of Christ not to feel that 
the most awful and most lamentable aspect of sin is not 
personal, but social; not the mere guilt or the mere 
destruction of the actual sinner, but the menace to society 
involved in the presence of all sin and in the person of 
every sinner. For Christ viewed human lives not as 
detached units travelling through time by separate tracks, 
and parted the one from the other by invisible walls of 
individuality. Nothing more truly represents Christ's 
point of view than the dictum of one of His Apostles, 
"None of us liveth to himself,"^ together with the apos- 
tolic symbol of the human body with its many members, 
interrelated, interdependent, every one so related to the 
others that if one member suffers all the members suffer 
with it.^ In the view of Christ even to love God does not 
constitute the sum of religion. He parallels love to God 
with a companion duty which affirms the social nature of 
His religion. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind 
and with all thy strength ; this is the first and great com- 
mandment." "And," He continues, "the second is this; 

1 Rom. 14 : 17. 2 Cf. 1 Cor. 12 : 14-27. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 143 

thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."^ His own In- 
carnation was an embodiment and an interpretation of 
these coequal commandments — an epitome of religious 
and social law for the whole world. Turning Godward, He 
said: "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me and 
to accomplish His work."^ Turning manward, He cried, 
in words that have done more than we know to draw the 
world unto Himself: "The Son of Man came not to be 
ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a 
ransom for many."* 

Such being the point of view of the Founder of Chris- 
tianity, it follows of necessity that sin is something more 
complex than the offense of an individual against God 
and a wrong against his own better self. Sin is a social 
offense; a wrong done to society; a wounding of the 
corporate life of mankind; a contribution of unknown 
magnitude to the humiliation, debasement, suffering, and 
evil impulse of the world. 

Not that the repentance of the one who sins is mini- 
mised in the thought of Christ. On the contrary, never, 
in the eagerness of His love for the well-being of society, 
does He lose sight of the individual, however humble or 
however base. "There is joy," He says, "in the presence 
of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth."* 
But the penitence of a sinner, however important and 
welcome in itself, cannot undo the malign social con- 
sequences of a life of sin. And alas! the world is full, 
and for ages has been full, of sinners that repented not, 
but went on by every form of abnormal conduct, unbridled 
indulgence, unfraternal enmity, and stony-hearted selfish- 
ness, to corrupt and devastate the corporate life of man- 

1 Mark 12 : 30, 31. 2 John 4 : 34. 

3 Matt. 20 : 28. * Luke 15 : 10. 



144 Barrows Lectures 

kind by spreading the plague of sin. Although I speak 
in the phraseology of a Christian, my thought is broad as 
humanity itself. Its truth must be acknowledged by all 
men of intelligence and feeling, as they review the history 
of the world and contemplate its present estate. There 
is none, be he Hindu, or Buddhist, or Moslem, or Parsi, 
or Jew, or Christian, who denies the social interdependence 
of mankind, or doubts the truth that moral evil spreads 
like a plague from life to life ; taints with a common 
malady the guiltless and the unclean; hangs like a pall 
over West and East ; presses an overflowing cup of bitter- 
ness to the unwilling lips of humanity. 

Think with me this thought, my brothers; though we 
think in different languages, and in the terms of different 
faiths, still may we think together this thought ; for there 
is kinship in it ; there is universality in it ; the kinship of 
a common burden; the universality of a common aspira- 
tion for power, deliverance, and salvation. We may 
phrase that aspiration variously, but in essence it is a 
common aspiration, and in its presence all religious rival- 
ries should die away and we should hear one another, as 
workers at a common problem, if perchance any man have 
some contribution toward its solution that is not local and 
sectarian, but universal. Turning away, therefore, from 
our differences, rising above the disposition to assail the 
faith or the practice of one another, daring to believe in 
the essential kinship of all earnest souls, and the essential 
oneness of all truth, may our thoughts commune in 
love! 

As we find ourselves in the opening years of the twen- 
tieth century since the Incarnation of Christ, we are con- 
scious that strong men everywhere are grappling with the 
problem of existence. In the universities of the East and 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 145 

of the West, in the press, on the platform, in the private 
intercourse of serious men, one word is uppermost, one 
theme is paramount. That word, that theme, is Life. 
Events and persons cross the field of public attention in 
ceaseless procession. They arise, they advance, they fill 
for an hour the public eye, they retire and give place to 
others, to be, in their turn, forgotten. But Life, the con- 
dition precedent of all persons and events ; Life, the state 
of existence whereof persons and events are momentary 
interpretations, is the vast underlying problem, interest 
in which never flags. To explore the hidden springs 
whence it emerges; to analyse the contributory forces 
that make it what it is ; to know the causes that determine 
its modes of expression, the laws that govern its func- 
tions, the ends that are served by its characteristic forms 
of action, the obstacles that impede its course, the ocean 
of destiny that awaits its consummation; upon this the 
strongest thought of our time is fastening its attention. 
But is it anything new that men should grapple with the 
problem of existence? When have they not done so? 
What age has not had its seers, whose souls were like stars 
and dwelt apart; whose eyes, purged by wisdom, gazed 
beyond the phantasmal play of superficial incidents into 
the reasons of things, probing the mysteries of birth and 
rebirth, of sorrow and joy, of death and immortality! 
What are the Vedas and the Upanishads and the Gita 
but illustrious fruits of illustrious minds that in ages past 
have grappled with the problem of existence ? Who are 
Confucius and the Buddha, and the seers of Zarathush- 
trianism, and the Semitic prophets, but souls inspired by 
the One Spirit of the ever-living God to ascend into the 
watch-towers of contemplation and peer into the enshroud- 
ing mystery of Life! There is nothing new in the fact 



146 Barrows Lectures 

that in the dawn of the twentieth century strong men of 
every faith are grappling with the problem of existence. 

But, in this new century, one seems to hear the deep- 
ening vibration of a new note and to feel that, in ever- 
increasing numbers, strong men are grappling in a new 
way with the perennial mystery of Life. It may be said, 
broadly — but, I think, with perfect fidelity to the historic 
facts — that the prevailing note in the great thought- 
movements of pre-Christian religions, and, to no small ex- 
tent, in certain very important schools of Christian thought, 
has been the note of sadness and the aspiration for escape 
from a present mode of existence in which evil is a neces- 
sary condition. *' Since to be is to suffer — sorrow being 
of the very essence of life — existence is to be abhorred and 
renounced."^ The thirst for existence is to be quenched; 
the whole energy of the mind is to be concentrated on the 
attainment of a future state, which by some has been con- 
templated as the completion of personality ; by others, as 
its extinction; by all, as a desirable release from an evil 
and intolerable present. I speak of this with the greatest 
reverence and appreciation. Joined with this note of sad- 
ness are some of the loftiest and most tender interpreta- 
tions of conduct in the present life the world has ever 
known; and the loftiest and most tender of them all have 
sprung from the seers of India. 

But, as I listen attentively to the thought-movement 
of the present time, I seem to hear, from an increasing 
number of those gathered out of all faiths who are grap- 
pling with the problem of existence, that old note of sad- 
ness and that old aspiration for escape gradually and 
sweetly changing into a new note and a new aspiration. 
The new note is the major note of hope, rising in courage 

1 SliATEB, Higher Hinduism, p. 207. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 147 

above the minor note of sadness. The new aspiration 
breathes itself forth in the purpose to redeem this present 
life rather than to escape from it; not to get away from 
this evil and sorrowful world, but to make this world less 
evil and less sorrowful, a better place to live in; the 
aspiration to live after a nobler fashion in the world that 
now is, by lifting up the masses of the people, by giving 
them new hope, new inspiration, new motive. I find an 
enormous increase of this type of thought and feeling in 
all lands. In not a few cases it professes to be purely 
humanitarian and secular, a non-religious social reform; 
in other cases it is distinctly religious, the application of 
religion to the life that now is, to make that life every- 
where more worth living. Yet, as I listen attentively to 
that note of hope and that aspiration for social redemp- 
tion, as I see men rising up everywhere who believe that 
life is worth living, if only it can be emancipated from the 
thralldom of sorrow and the tyranny of pessimism that 
have bound it in the past ; and that the people are capable 
of being redeemed to better things, if only the latent 
spark of the Divine Nature in them can be fanned into 
self -consciousness ; I realise with delight that, though we 
know it not, all we who, in common, desire this redemp- 
tion of the world are, in our deepest thought, looking to 
One God to help us bring this thing about. By many 
modes of expression have our hearts gone out toward Him, 
yet He has understood us all; by various names have we 
described Him to ourselves, yet He knew the thought 
that veiled itself within the Name; and He, the Maker 
and Lover of the world, hears the prayer of hearts 
wherein He has planted love and hope and the spirit of 
brotherhood. I believe that many a secularist reformer 
shares in this yearning after God's help in the redemp- 



148 Barrows Lectures 

tion of the world ; for secularism, which is avowed reaction 
from God, sometimes is but the revolt of godlike hearts 
from the unrealities and tyrannies and inconsistencies of 
conventional religion; and its renunciation of these may 
mean only its deeper yearning after One who, behind all 
unrealities, remains utterly real, and, beneath all falsities, 
utterly true. 

The new note of hope is rising as the century opens. 
The new aspiration for the betterment of the world and 
the redemption of the people swells like a tide over 
divisive landmarks and joins kindred spirits in the one 
appeal to God to help us to help mankind. It is possible 
to point to causes that have helped to bring about this 
state of feeling. Not by chance is it that the incoming 
century finds so many thousands of souls, representing all 
the greater nations and the greater faiths of East and 
West, filled with the conviction that the world is capable 
of being made better; that humanity has the right to be 
redeemed; that sin is the social plague that blasts human 
life; and that they that are strong ought to bear the 
infirmities of the weak and not to please themselves. Not 
by chance is it that strong men everywhere, from the 
Ganges to the Mississippi, are taking a deeper moral 
interest in the life that now is and are not turning from 
it in disgust, to escape to a life that is to be. Three great 
forces — two of them positive, one of them negative — are 
contributing to this state of things: an increasing knowl- 
edge of better ways of living ; an increasing appreciation 
of the value of human life; and an increasing sense of 
the discrepancy between what the present life might be 
for the masses of mankind, and what in fact it is. 

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century 
physical science, by its researches and discoveries in the 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 149 

field of matter, by its applications of natural law for the 
convenience and protection of man, and by its disclosure 
and treatment of the causes of bodily suffering, has 
enhanced beyond computation the comfort and excellence 
of existence in this world. Vast fields of new knowledge 
have been opened and explored; the uses of steam and 
electricity have enlarged the range of possible action for 
the individual, while the knowledge and practice of sani- 
tation and the triumphs of modern surgery point to an 
alleviation of human distress that may in the future 
exceed our present dreams. The world has become 
physically a better place to live in. Many evils long held 
to be inevitable, and ascribed to the operations of malig- 
nant fate, now are seen to be results of ignorance or per- 
versity, preventable by the diffusion of knowledge or 
curable by medical skill. Many barriers to social advance- 
ment, long supposed to be insurmountable, have been 
swept away. The healing touch of a benign science is 
reaching out toward every bed of pain; and into lands 
and races remote from the centres of modern research the 
renovating influence of sanitation is projecting itself. 

Parallel with this perception of better ways of living 
has grown the appreciation of the value of human life. 
The study of human life has become a science, and the 
forces making for the advancement or the degeneration of 
races, families, and individuals are being investigated and 
classified. The blessing of education and the curse of 
illiteracy are questioned nowhere outside of the zone of 
barbarism. Wherever intelligence, coupled with moral 
sanity, asserts itself, there the intrinsic value of a man's 
life, a woman's life, a child's life, is recognised. Not yet 
has the world advanced beyond the sacrifice of life in war ; 
but the deepening horror in view of that sacrifice is 



150 Barrows Lectures 

unquestionable, and the growth of a public sentiment 
against it is becoming as conspicuous as long since it 
became against the degradation of life by slavery. The 
coming in of the twentieth century finds the world girdled 
with effort to protect weakness from neglect, innocence 
from criminal profanation, childhood from cruelty, def ense- 
lessness from tyranny, poverty from oppression. The 
saving of imperilled life is rewarded with approbation 
and honour ; and the duty of sustaining life in the poorest 
and feeblest of the race is made an axiom of civilisation. 
But while these, two positive influences, promoted by 
the growth of a cosmopolitan spirit (which, permit me to 
say, is illustrated nobly in a large section of the native 
press of India), have contributed to the new aspiration 
for the betterment of the world and the redemption of the 
people, there is a third influence, negative in its character, 
that has worked for the same end. It is an increasing 
sense of the discrepancy between what the present life 
might be for the masses of mankind, and what in fact it 
is. The augmented knowledge of better ways of living, 
and the deepening sense of the value and the sacredness 
of every human life, only set forth in more tremendous 
contrast the existing wretchedness, sorrow, and moral 
disability of the world. The people are not saved; sin, 
the potent cause of misery and degeneration, is not con- 
quered ; the plague is not stayed. Because we know so 
well the better modes of living and the large ranges of 
possibility opened to modern life through the advancement 
of knowledge, it seems the more terrible that incalculable 
multitudes live on, unreached even by the physical advan- 
tages that are doing so much for others; untouched even 
by the bodily salvation that means health and courage. 
Because we believe the intrinsic value, in the sight of 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 151 

God, of every human creature that lives upon this earth, 
it seems the more piteous that everywhere are beings, in 
whom are buried potentialities of Divine communion, 
living and dying without God and without hope in the 
world. It is a thought that makes us forget whether we 
are Hindus or Christians, and remember only that we are 
men and that these are men whom we would save; and 
all that is best within us utters itself in one great cry to 
the Infinite One, whose world this is, whose children these 
are, that He would stretch forth the hand of love and 
power to save His own. 

When wilt Thou save the people ? 

O God of mercy, when ? 
Not kings and lords, but nations ! 

Not thrones and crowns, but men! 
Flowers of Thy heart, O God, are they; 

Let them not pass, like weeds, away, 
Their heritage a sunless day; 
God save the people ! 

When wilt thou save the people ? 

O God of mercy, when ? 
The people. Lord, the people. 

Not thrones and crowns, but men ! 
God save the people ; Thine they are. 
Thy children, as Thine angels fair ; 
From vice, oppression and despair, 
God save the people !^ 

As the situation outlines itself upon our imagination: 
on the one hand, all this wealth of knowledge for the 
betterment of our present existence, and all this apprecia- 
tion of the value and sacredness of life; on the other 
hand, humanity groaning and travailing in sin and sorrow, 
oppressed with a moral inertia that defies all philosophy 

iEbenezee Elliott (1781-1849). 



152 Barrows Lectures 

and baffles all science, the question forces itself on every 
thoughtful mind : What is lacking ? Wherefore does the 
world remain sunken in an apathy of woe, and possessed 
of the demon of self-destruction, while knowledge grows 
from more to more, and social sympathy wells like a living 
spring from tens of thousands of godlike hearts ? What 
is lacking ? To that question I make answer, speaking, 
not with the doubtful authority of dogmatism, but with 
the humble certitude of experience gathered in the actual 
field of life itself. Power is lacking, dynamic force, to 
cope with this mystery of existence ; power to overcome 
the force that is making existence a weary round of sorrow 
and discouragement for the masses of mankind ; power to 
bring the world to a better state of living; power to lift 
things, to make things morally new, to overcome evil with 
good, to fight sin as the great social foe as well as the 
great individual enemy. From the beginning man has 
conceived of power, an illimitable moral and spiritual 
dynamic, as the most glorious of possibilities; and the 
history of religion is the history of his yearnings for that 
heavenly gift. As I review the history of religion, I am 
conscious of the persistence of that noble yearning; it is 
as the throbbing of the blood royal in the heart of man 
in whom is the seed of God. But, until beneath the 
Syrian sky descends to earth that Day-Spring from on 
high, who came to give light to them that sit in darkness 
and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the 
way of peace; until Christ the Very Grod appeared, 
announcing, in the mystery of His Incarnation, that the 
gift of power is for the life that now is, the noblest 
aspirations of religion spent themselves in expectation of 
the future, rather than in redemption of the present. 
Amidst many variations of expression, as the great seers 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 153 

of the pre-Christian ages grappled with the problem of 
our present existence, the one common note was sadness, 
the sadness of those who dealt with a baffling and weari- 
some illusion, or who, bound to the unpitying wheel of 
necessity, must endure unto the day of their release, when 
the hindering bonds of ignorance should be loosed and 
the burden of individuality should be taken away. How 
deeply I sympathise with those heroic conceptions of 
soul-union with the blessed Brahma and with those lofty 
refusals to fix the affections on transitory and evanescent 
incidents of time! 

It is evident that those conceptions could not give, and 
were not intended to give, a moral and spiritual dynamic 
for the redemption of the life that now is, and for the 
salvation of society from the ravages of sin. They served 
other ends; contributed in other ways to the needs of the 
religious nature; and so long as present existence is 
regarded as illusory, and the aim of the individual as 
escape from that illusion, the sufficiency of those concep- 
tions is obvious. 

But, through the operation of forces characteristic of 
the present age, and increasing in authority and influence 
every day — forces by no means wholly religious, but 
rather scientific and sociological — a new view of the ex- 
cellence and desirableness of our present existence begins 
to prevail. A new appreciation of the sacredness and 
significance of every human life ; a new conviction that 
life is worth living, and that every creature has the right 
to share in its goodness; a new realisation that sin is not 
a theological fiction, but a personal curse and a social 
plague, is spreading abroad through all lands wherever 
men of education and moral dignity are to be found. 
These convictions are taking hold with new force of the 



154 Barrows Lectures 

best life of America and England quite as much as of the 
best life of India or Japan. They are not local or racial; 
much less are they denominational or sectarian: they are 
products of that one great commonwealth of moral earnest- 
ness wherein all true hearts, regardless of creed, language, 
tradition, or colour, meet one another on the basis of 
citizenship in a Kingdom of God on earth. There are 
those who tell us that there is a great gulf fixed between 
East and West, that mutual understanding, with com- 
munity of feeling and action, are impossible.^ I admit 
with sorrow that there are alienating forces at work, politi- 
cal and economic, to keep the East and West apart; but 
that there is a psychological and ethical chasm existent in 
the nature of things, I shall not believe so long as my 
heart beats its involuntary response to so much that I read 
in the editorials of your native press concerning education 
and virtue and the service of humanity. I know that 
there are multitudes of noble souls in India who share 
these convictions of the value of life, the rights of men, 
the plague of moral evil; and who are looking, as all 
good men are looking, for some power capable of wrest- 
ling with the destructive forces that oppress and devastate 
society; capable of lifting men's hearts from the apathy 
caused by sin and its consequent sorrow, and impregnat- 
ing them with the elements of hope and belief in the 
present love of God. 

It is then not an academic question, but a practical 
question; not a matter for theological theorists, but the 
affair of earnest men: Is there any such dynamic? 
Where is it to be found? Who has it to give? Once 
more I say, that to this question I make answer. And 
my answer involves a statement of fact that may be tested 

1 Cf. Meredith Townsend, Asia and Europe, passim. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 155 

by experience, verified or refuted. It contains no ele- 
ment of sectarian zeal and no trace of controversial animus. 
It bears upon a matter of common interest, of common 
humanity — the salvation of the world from sin, sorrow, 
and degeneration. This concerns Indians or Japanese 
quite as much as Englishmen or Americans. 

My answer is this, that, so far as I know, there is no 
such dynamic as that of which we all feel the need, no 
power competent to deal with the situation, no might 
great enough to grapple with the moral evil that is keep- 
ing the world out of its heritage of good, no force strong 
enough to stay the plague of sin and raise sinners into the 
joy and health of righteousness, but that which comes to 
the world in Jesus Christ and His Holy Sacrifice for man. 

This, I repeat, is a statement of fact, that can be tested 
by experience, verified or refuted. To make this answer 
involves not in the slightest degree the discrediting of any 
other religion. It casts no aspersion upon Sri Gauranga, 
or the Buddha, or Confucius, or any other saintly name 
loved and honoured among the children of men. It rec- 
ognises gratefully all that these have done, and by their 
influence are doing, to impart courage and consolation. 
It affirms only that, if, as men who bear upon their souls 
the burden of the world's condition, we yearn for some 
power wherewith to deal with that condition, some power 
that can break through apathy, convince of sin, awaken 
moral obedience, inspire hope, and lift to higher things, 
the facts of experience and the rational suggestions 
springing from those facts point to Christ, and to Him 
alone, as the source of such power. 

As one who reveres religion in all its manifold forms; 
who honours the sincerity of those whose faiths he cannot 
share; who stands rebuked before the greater fidelity 



156 Barrows Lectures 

and consistency of many non- Christian believers; I am 
forced by experience and by reason to the conviction that, 
whatever comfort and inspiration there are in other faiths, 
it is the peculiar prerogative of Christ alone to give 
salvation from sin to the individual life, and to redeem 
society from the moral burdens now pressing upon it. 
Others, as well as He, have led beautiful and gentle 
liyes that are an example to the world. Others, as well 
as He, have been great teachers, whose counsels sank into 
the hearts of their disciples; whose thoughts glowed as 
with heavenly fire ; whose words descend in undiminished 
power, from generation to generation. Others, as well as 
He, have wrought miraculous deeds, that drew men in 
homage to their feet. Others, as well as He, have laid 
down their lives for the truth, going in meekness and 
magnanimity to untimely graves, sealing their testimony 
with their blood. Others, as well as He, live on in the 
memories of their followers; their names fragrant as 
ointment poured forth; their influence a perpetual in- 
centive to righteousness. But Christ, and He alone, 
abides, as the ages come and go; not as the beautiful 
memory, not as the brilliant teacher, not as the hero of 
a sacred tradition, but as the life-giving Spirit, present 
in the world, dealing with the lives of men, and day by 
day repeating in a thousand souls those miracles of grace, 
beside which the opening of the eyes of the blind, the 
unstopping of the ears of the deaf, are but momentary 
physical prophecies; even the breaking asunder of the 
bands of sin; the washing away of moral stains; the re- 
birth of the spiritual sense; the new creation of motive 
and impulse and aspiration; the transformation of char- 
acter; the leading forth of regenerated self -consciousness 
out of darkness, into His marvellous Light. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 157 

I am asserting nothing that is not openly known. 
These facts stand in the common highway of human expe- 
rience, verified in the lives of living men of all nations 
and kindreds and peoples and tongues. They came out 
of different races; their ancestors diverged to the ends of 
the earth; they were nourished in faiths, in customs, in 
social and political conditions, absolutely unrelated; they 
were aliens to one another in language, in colour, in 
earthly station; some were princes, some were slaves; 
some were bowed with the load of years, some erect in 
the vigour of youth ; they had in common only the taint 
of moral evil, the torturing slavery of sin, the sorrow of 
an abused and dishonoured selfhood. And He, lifted up 
above all distinctions of race, religion, social estate, or 
degree of iniquity, drew them all unto Himself, and gave 
forth to them all the selfsame gift of forgiving love and 
regenerating power, whereby they became new creatures 
in Him, their world a new world, their hope a new hope, 
their life a new life. 

Who else but Christ has this power today — this power 
which, more than all else, the world needs? Who else 
but Christ has this ability to confer redemption that 
makes the strangers or the foes of yesterday brothers in 
a new bond of love today ? Who else can stay the plague 
of passion that eats out the heart of life; who break the 
fetters of pernicious habit and grant a liberty that is like 
a resurrection from the dead; who change the motives, 
not of an individual alone, but of an entire community, 
eradicating old vices of hatred and selfishness, implanting 
sweet desires of charity and holiness; and doing all, not 
with violence, but in silent gentleness, like the powers of 
sun and air that work the miracle of growth ? 

Who, then, is This that holds this power over men, 



158 Barroivs Lectures 

this creative authority over life? Who is This that, 
everywhere present in the world, does what none other 
does, what none other ever has done or claimed to do? 
"Who is This that makes all things new; that transforms 
men into new creations, drawing unto Himself from the 
ends of the earth them that are weary and heavy-laden 
with the sin of life? Hearken to His own testimony 
concerning Himself: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, 
saith the Lord God, Which is and Which was and Which 
is to come; the Almighty. I am the First and the Last, 
and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am 
alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death. I am 
the Resurrection and the Life ; he that belie veth on Me, 
though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth 
and believeth on Me, shall never die."^ 

He came in the fullness of time, emerging from the 
self-knowing depths of Infinite Personality, clothing His 
Essence in the garment of veritable humanity. He 
came, not to destroy, but to fulfill ; not to trample on more 
ancient faiths; not to set at naught Hebrew prophet or 
Vedic seer ; not to abolish and condemn beliefs and hopes 
precious to Aryan seekers after God. He came to gather 
together in one all the scattered elements of truth, incar- 
nating them in Himself; to preserve and co-ordinate that 
in every faith which bears the eternal imprint, and gently 
to dissolve that in every faith which has done its work 
and has survived its time. 

He came as the Self -revealing God, who would be 
known in the qualities of His eternal loveliness, that men 
might no longer muse darkly concerning Him as the 
impersonal Absolute, nor cower in dread before Him as a 
god of hatred and cruelty ; but love Him as the Source of 

1 Rev. 1 : 8, 17, 18 ; John 11 : 25, 26. 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 159 

love, and pour forth their hearts to Him as children to a 
Father, and weep forth their sorrows on His breast and 
commit the keeping of their souls to Him, as unto a 
faithful Creator. Therefore He went about doing good, 
bearing men's griefs and carrying men's sorrows; consid- 
erate of all weakness, responsive to all appeals, redemp- 
tive in His ministrations, constructive in His teachings; 
interpreting all that He said and did by the one great 
word: "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father!"^ 

He came as the Sin-condemning Judge. The vesture 
of His spirit was stainless holiness; the garments of His 
soul were glistening, exceeding white, "so as no fuller on 
earth can white them." He was holy, guileless, undefiled, 
and separate from sinners. He came into His incarnate 
estate to redeem sinners, and began His work by the 
condemnation of their sin. That which sin is, the self- 
assertion of the finite ego as against the holy will of God, 
must, in the nature of the case, be intolerable to God, 
alike from the standpoint of justice and from the stand- 
point of love; intolerable to justice because abnormal; 
intolerable to love because unfilial. Therefore His con- 
demnations of sin were explicit and momentous. He 
condemned sin by His words. In their power of ethical 
analysis they were sharper than any two-edged sword, 
piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, dis- 
cerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. They 
sank through the cloak of hypocrisy and struck at the 
heart of untruth. They probed to the depths of unright- 
eousness and laid bare the iniquities of intention and 
desire. He condemned sin by His example — not the 
mere negative example of abstention from wrong-doing, 
but, infinitely more, the positive example of filial obe- 

1 John 14: 9. 



160 Barrows Lectures 

dience. Obedience was His meat, the bread of service. 
The joy with which in His mystical Sonship He surren- 
dered all egoistic volition was, by the law of contrast, 
an arraignment of man's unchastened self-seeking; an 
arraignment never so awful as when, in the Sweat of 
Blood, He prayed: "Not My will, but Thine be done."* 
He condemned sin by His Death. Led as a lamb to the 
slaughter; giving His back to the smiters and His cheek 
to them that plucked out the hair; crowned with the dia- 
dem of ignominy and exposed upon the Cross of shame; 
despised and rejected of men; the last sufferings of Him 
whose spirit was holiness and whose life was love, dis- 
closed, arraigned, convicted, and condemned that mad- 
ness of self-will in man which stops not at the denial of 
its best Friend, the crucifixion of its Kedeemer. 

He came as the suffering Saviour. He saved others, 
Himself He could not save.^ He could not because He 
would not. All power in Heaven and on earth were His, 
yet Love made itself of no reputation, and became obe- 
dient unto death, even the death of the Cross. There 
was no other way, save death, great enough to express 
that love. In death He condemned sin that He might 
redeem the sinful. The Sacrifice was preventable; but 
He would not prevent it. Himself deathless, as the 
Image of the Father, in His own flesh underwent death, 
as the corporate Representative of the whole human race, 
that through death He might present himself to the 
Father for us. For us He died, for us He arose from 
the dead, that as, by His Death, we, in Christ, receive 
the condemnation of sin, so, in His Rising, we also 
should rise and walk with Him in newness of life.' 

1 Luke 22 : 42. 2 cf. Matt. 27 : 42. 

3 Cf. Athanasius, C. Ar., I, 41 ; see also Mobeblt, Atonement and Person' 
ality, especially the supplementary chapter on "The Atonement in History." 



The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ 161 

So the suffering Saviour passed to His Cross. Pain, 
anguish, humiliation girt Him in on every side. Dark- 
ness and loneliness opened their arms to receive Him. 
Yet joy sustained the spirit of the Man of Sorrows, who, 
for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, 
despising the shame; joy, that from the rending of His 
Life in death should spring a fountain of cleansing for 
all the generations of men; joy, that through the consum- 
mation of His sufferings a self-expression of the Love of 
God should be accomplished, whereby to melt the stony 
heart of human selfishness and to set its affections on 
things above. 

When I survey the wondrous Cross, 
On which the Prince of Glory died; 

My richest gain I count but loss. 
And pour contempt on all my pride. 

Were the whole realm of nature mine, 

That were a present far too small; 
Love so amazing, so divine, 
Demands my soul, my life, my all.^ 
1 Isaac Watts. 



FIFTH LECTURE 

THE IDEAS OF HOLINESS AND IMMORTALITY INTL^ER- 
PRETED BY CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 

In the unfolding of my theme I am now to advance 
beyond the negative aspects of the moral problem of the 
religion of Christ, as exhibited in the phenomena of sin, 
and to consider the positive connotations of the idea of 
Holiness. 

I could wish that it had been possible to present the 
subject of the Holy Life in immediate connection with the 
analysis of sin, and as a part of the same lecture, inasmuch 
as the nexus of thought is so very close. But, that being 
impracticable, by reason of limitations of time, I must ask 
you to recall the main positions of my last lecture and to 
make them the basis of what now is to be said. 

It was pointed out that the nature of our conception of 
sin is determined, antecedently, by the interpretations 
which we give to the ideas of God and of finite per- 
sonality. If God is regarded as the impersonal Absolute, 
and the finite self as illusory and transient, the philosophi- 
cal and practical conclusions regarding sin will shape 
themselves accordingly. If God is self-realising, moral 
Personality, maintaining toward man an attitude of holy, 
Fatherly love ; and if the finite self is an actual and per- 
manent differentiation of God's Essence, possessing finite 
individuality, ethical self-realisation, will, and responsi- 
bility, sin becomes the formidable menace to life which, 
by Christ and by the Christian Scriptures, it is held to be. 
Its essence is not a necessity existent in the nature of 
things ; an inevitable shadow cast by righteousness ; a 
beneficent stepping-stone in the progress of the individual 

162 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 163 

from the ignorance of innocency to the experiential knowl- 
edge of virtue. Neither is sin an inherent property of 
the physical nature as distinct from the spiritual nature, 
for God cannot be regarded as the author of that which 
intrinsically is evil, or as the promoter of conflict between 
body and spirit, dividing human life against itself ; and, 
furthermore, there are sins that inhabit exclusively the 
regions of intellectual and spiritual consciousness, and do 
not involve the physical realm. The Christian view of sin 
locates its seat in the will and defines its nature as the 
self-assertion of the finite ego against the Divine order of 
life. Not that this capacity for self-assertion is in itself 
evil, but unquestionably good. It is, in fact, the greatest 
and most Godlike element in man. Taken in connection 
with the moral reason of which it is the executive 
expression, it is that endowment in and through which 
man is a partaker of the Divine nature. This most noble 
capability produces sin, when, obeying suggestions from 
without or from within, it operates in antagonism to the 
Divine order of life ; saying, in effect, to the holy, loving 
God: "Not Thy will, but mine, be done." 

Such a misuse of the Godlike property of self-assertion 
involves man in abnormal relations to God, to himself, and 
to society. Every volition and act of sin must be regarded, 
in its relation to God, as selfishness tinged with the 
ingratitude and unseemliness that belong to self-assertion 
against wise and considerate love ; and as a denial 
of sovereignty whereby He who has every right to deter- 
mine the lines of our action is set aside. Not less 
abnormal is the relation in which the sinner places him- 
self toward his own life by every erroneous self-assertion, 
and by the constitutional attitude of selfishness produced 
by repetitions of sin. He is dealing deadly blows at his 



164 Barrows Lectures 

own life, maltreating the delicate organism of personality, 
wronging his own soul. He is, by each erroneous self- 
assertion, shutting out good that would have come to him 
on normal lines and now is stopped by his abnormality. 
His sin is his self -impoverishment ; it is the son trampling 
on his own birthright, the heir disinheriting himself. It 
is in his relation to society that the abnormality of the 
doer of sin culminates. For, inasmuch as no man liveth 
to himself, the consequences of each self-assertion against 
the Divine order project themselves into the common life 
of man as the seeds of a spreading plague, the bitter over- 
flow of a cup of sorrow, an ever-deepening shadow upon 
the problem of existence. With that problem the prophets 
of the greater religions have grappled for many thousands 
of years, and the lofty sadness of their utterances has 
given melancholy consolation to millions of lives, by 
expressing the feeling that finite existence is labour and 
sorrow, a profitless treadmill, a wheel of tormenting illu- 
sions, to escape from which and from the vain desire to 
live is the chief end of man; to melt like the dewdrop 
in the silent sea.^ 

But, as the twentieth century opens, there are signs 
in various parts of the world, and within the domains of 
some of the great religions, that a new day of thought is 
dawning for many religious, sympathetic, and able minds. 
What that new day may bring forth it is too soon to 
predict; but that its dawn is at hand will be acknowl- 
edged in certain influential circles as far apart from 
one another in some things as Hinduism, Buddhism^ 
Judaism, and Christianity. The essence of this thought- 
movement, if such it may be called, although organised 
but in part, is a more hopeful view of life in this world; 

1 Cf. E Caied, Evolution of Religion, Vol. I, pp aJBJBf. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 165 

a conviction that it is worth living and has value for 
the individual, if it can be redeemed from the disabili- 
ties that beset it. In a word, the redemption of the life 
that now is begins to be regarded with hope by a 
growing number of serious minds. I have ventured the 
opinion that this feeling is due in part to the possibilities 
for the betterment and enrichment of our present existence 
that have been brought to light by recent discoveries and 
inventions. Physical science rapidly is making this 
world a more desirable place of residence. The feeling 
in question is due also, in part, to the increasing sense of 
the value of human life, produced by the science of soci- 
ology. The human problem is being probed to its depths 
with illuminating results, which are being made accessible 
through the growth, in all lands, of a cosmopolitan spirit. 
Joined with this is a marked increase of humanitarian 
sympathy, showing itself in an appreciation of the dis- 
crepancy between what life might be, and what, in fact, 
it is, for the masses of mankind. As science shows us 
how much of the physical evil of life could be prevented 
or removed by better moral conditions, the conviction 
strengthens that moral evil is the actual cause of the 
world's sorrow; that sin is the real incubus upon 
humanity. In this opinion there is an involuntary con- 
sensus among men of the most diverse theological views; 
and, as these thinkers of the new social thoughts meet, in 
Japan or in India or in America, they find in one another 
a common longing to make people better and thereby to 
break the moral bondage of the world. Nothing is more 
certain than the existence of this common longing, felt 
by an enlarging circle of men in all the great religions of 
the world, to release humanity from the bonds of moral 
evil that are holding the world back from rich possibili- 



166 Barrows Lectures 

ties of good in the present life, to say nothing of the life 
to come. 

I have pointed out also that not less general than this 
solicitude for the elevation of mankind is the conviction 
that power is needed to bring about that end — a dynamic 
capable of dealing with the situation; able to cope with 
the benumbing influence of sin, and to impregnate with 
moral feeling hearts afflicted with this plague; able to 
arrest the forces of selfishness that everywhere, in high 
places and low, are postponing the redemption and aug- 
menting the sorrow of this present world. The practical 
question that confronts us all is: Whence shall this 
power come? Who has it to give? I have undertaken 
to answer that question; and my answer is being made in 
no spirit of partisanship. I have little zeal for making 
proselytes; small interest in seeing one religious sect 
triumph over others; much less in discrediting or dis- 
honouring the faith of another. I share with you, my 
brothers, and with all earnest, open-minded men through- 
out the world, a love of humanity, a sorrow over its limi- 
tations, a longing for the reversal of those conditions of 
perverted self-will whereby men are revolting from the 
Divine sovereignty, wronging their own lives, and 
spreading the plague of evil throughout an already con- 
taminated society. With you I pray that prayer which, 
in our several faiths, is one: "Thy Kingdom come, O 
God; Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven." 
And I feel resting upon myself the same duty that I con- 
ceive to rest on each member of this unorganised 
brotherhood of hope throughout the world, to utter his 
belief as to any source whence may come the power 
which, we all agree, is needed, to cope with the present 
difficulties of the world and to confer upon it the inesti- 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 167 

mable gifts of moral deliverance and normal relationship 
to God. By permitting me to speak in your presence 
you have given me the opportunity to discharge this duty. 

Frankly I have declared that I see no hope of 
obtaining for the world the power required to break the 
bondage of moral evil, from any other source than from 
Jesus Christ and His Holy Sacrifice for man. While 
saying this I have expressed my deep respect for other 
and older forms of faith, and my gratitude for their past 
and present good. But I am forced, not by any sectarian 
prejudice, but by reason and by experience, to the con- 
viction that, while other faiths have other functions for 
the many-sided life of man, the function of saving sinners 
from their sins, and bringing them back into that normal 
relation with God which is personal holiness, is the pre- 
rogative of Jesus Christ alone. He, and He alone, has 
the power of which the world, as we all agree, stands in 
need. The great spiritual leaders of the ages share with 
Christ the distinctions of beauty of life, teaching power, 
the veneration of followers, and, in some instances, heroic 
obedience to death ; but Christ alone remains, as the cen- 
turies come and go, a life-giving Spirit, present every- 
where in His world, and working day by day the one 
transcendent miracle, attested by the experience of millions 
of living persons, of all nations, languages, religions, 
social conditions, and degrees of age — the miracle of 
deliverance from the power of sin; renewal of the per- 
verted will in harmony with the Divine order of life; 
reconstruction of motive and transformation of character. 

That Christ has this power and has it today is estab- 
lished by such a volume of independent, living testimony 
as would corroborate any other statement, scientific or 
historical, in any court of public opinion. The fact that 



168 Barrows Lectures 

multitudes are to be found who claim the name of Chris- 
tian, yet give no evidence of the spiritual power of Christ, 
is admitted freely and sorrowfully. The facts that many 
religious differences exist among sects of Western Chris- 
tians, and that governments officially professing the 
Christian religion countenance policies inconsistent with 
the spirit of Christ, are beyond dispute. In view of these 
facts, I must refer to what repeatedly has been said in 
these lectures, that I am by no means presenting Western 
religious and political institutions as ideals of practical 
Christianity for the imitation of the East. I would not, 
if I could, impose organised Western Christianity upon 
the Orient ; not only because it is loaded with local adap- 
tations peculiar to the West and not germane to the East, 
but because it is, in various respects, unworthy to be cited 
as an adequate presentment of the ideal growth of a 
Christian society; much dross being mingled with its 
gold. 

But these unhappy degenerations from ideal Christian 
conditions, by the law of contrast, throw into sharper 
relief the actual work of that ever-present, life-giving 
Spirit, the Living Christ. It goes on in millions of lives 
today, whose experiences of His power to do what no other 
being does or has done, could they be collected, would 
present an overpowering accumulation of testimony, 
created without collusion or forethought by persons un- 
known to one another and remote from one another, physi- 
cally and intellectually. There are children into whose 
careless and inconsequent lives entered a power that has 
ordered wayward instinct, redirected stubborn will, suffused 
the soul with emotions of gentleness and desires of purity. 
They tell us that it is Christ's work in them. There are 
scholars and seers, familiar with the higher paths of wis- 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 169 

dom, who abandoned religious faith and, contemptuous of 
doctrine, chose secularism for their portion. But a light 
brighter than the sun shined in their hearts, perception 
of Divine reality returned, prayer sprang unbidden, and 
childlike longing to live unto God. They tell us that it is 
Christ who has made all things new. There are men who 
were the slaves of sin; base instincts of the flesh con- 
trolled them ; ferocious and malignant lusts made them 
plague spots in the social organism. Yet upon them has 
an unseen hand been laid, exorcising the devils within; 
transmuting thought, intention, desire; clothing them 
with a new life ; making them promoters of the good that 
once they hated and assailed. They tell us that it is 
Christ who has made them new creatures in Himself. 
The significance of these testimonies lies in their number, 
their persistent recurrence day by day, their spontaneity, 
and their range of experience. Reason refuses to ignore 
them. They point to a power working along the lines of 
the world's greatest need, effecting precisely those results 
in individuals which, by the common consent of all 
earnest men, are to be desired for society at large; 
namely, the breaking of the spell of moral evil, the reha- 
bilitation of character, the restoration of the alienated 
will to harmony with the Divine order" of life. 

This power appears to be centred in Christ. The 
exercise of it seems to be His exclusive prerogative. 
Looking without prejudice to other possible sources of 
similar power, we do not find it. It connects itself with 
Him ; apart from Him it fails to emerge. One is there- 
fore forced by reason to ask : Who then is He ? He Him- 
self makes answer in words the credibility of which, great 
at the beginning, increases as the passing years exhibit 
the undiminished fullness of His redemptive and recon- 



170 Barrows Lectures 

structive power: "I am the Alpha and the Omega; 
Which is and Which was and Which is to come; the 
Almighty."^ "I am the Living One."^ *'I am the 
Light of the World; he that followeth Me shall not 
walk in darkness but shall have the Light of Life."' 
Into the historic life of the world He came, as we have 
seen, not to destroy, but to upbuild. He came as the self- 
revealing God, emerging from the depths of Divine Per- 
sonality to incarnate in terms of manhood the eternal 
nature of love. He came as the sin-condemning Judge, 
clad in the splendours of righteousness; proclaiming by 
word, by example, by the tragic mystery of the Cross, that 
the selfishness of human sin is the undoing of man and 
the anguish of God. He came as the suffering Saviour, 
Himself deathless, as the Image of the Father, in His own 
flesh to undergo death, as the corporate Representative of 
the whole human race. 

But death, while it was "in one sense the culmination 
of His voluntary Sacrifice,"* was not the final expression 
of the power wherewith He has taken hold of the problem 
of human existence, to overcome evil with good, to bring 
men to God, saving them from their sins. He has power 
to lay down His life and power to take it again. In the 
words of one of the most ancient Christian hymns: 
"When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, 
Thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers." 
The consummation of the Incarnation is the Resurrection 
and the power of the Risen Life. Having descended in- 
to the depths of shame and destruction that He, the cor- 
porate Representative of humanity, tasting death for 
every man, might endure and exhibit the bitterness of sin, 

1 Rev. 1:9. 2 Rev. 1:18. 3 John 8: 12. 

* Farkab, The Atonement in Modern Religious Thought, p. 48. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 171 

He returns, holding the keys of death, as the life-giving 
Christ, in joyful resurrection, that man, through Him, 
forever more may have life and may have it more abun- 
dantly. Vitality, victory, hope, gladness, are the notes of 
His power over man. The historic evidence of His Res- 
urrection, however precious, is but a prelude for that 
unbounded evidence of His existence afforded by the con- 
tinuous and ever-enlarging experience of human lives. 
"Whatever may have happened at the grave," says one of 
the greatest and most cautious historical scholars of the 
world, "one thing is certain: this grave is the birthplace 
of the indestructible belief that death is vanquished; 
that there is life eternal. Wherever there is a strong faith 
in the infinite value of the soul, wherever the sufferings of 
the present are measured against a future of glory, this feel- 
ing of life is bound up with the conviction that Jesus 
Christ has passed through death, that God has awakened 
and raised Him to life and glory. It is not by any specu- 
lative ideas of philosophy, but by the vision of Jesus' Life 
and Death, and by the feeling of His imperishable union 
with God, that mankind, so far as it believes in these 
things, has attained to that certainty of eternal life it was 
meant to know and which it dimly discerns; eternal life 
in time and beyond time."^ 

From this point of view, the ethical relation of Christ 
to the present problem of moral evil appears. He who 
came as the self-revealing God, as the sin-condemning 
Judge, as the suffering Saviour, abides everywhere in the 
world as the life-giving Spirit of power, to be the Type 
and Standard of humanity. The solution of the problem 
of moral evil advances as the lives of men are brought 
into conformity with His Life. All that is wrong gives 

1 Habnack, What Is Christianity f English translation, p. 162. 



172 Barrows Lectures 

place to right; all abnormality is corrected; all chains of 
oppression are loosed ; all seeds of iniquity are sterilised ; 
all barriers detaining men from good are dissolved, as 
human lives reflect the image of Christ, the Type and 
Standard of humanity. 

Thus are we brought to that concept, Holiness, which 
for many thousands of years, in all the greater religions, 
has commanded the thought of the most illustrious minds. 
To say that holiness is the ideal of Christianity is to say 
nothing distinctive; other faiths exhibit the same ideal 
and produce examples of piety. It is only by ascertain- 
ing the connotations of the term, in each instance, that we 
discern its specific relation to life and its contribution to 
a solution of the great and terrible problem of moral 
evil; a sense of the oppressiveness of which is spreading 
throughout the most thoughtful religious circles of the 
world. 

It is difficult for us, who live under the influence of 
modern thought-relations, to realise that, in the primitive 
stages of religion, even such a fundamental word as *' holi- 
ness" could lack ethical or spiritual meaning. Well has 
it been said: "With the primitive habit of thought we 
have lost touch; and we cannot hope to understand it by 
the aid of logical discussion, but only by studying it on 
its ground as it is exhibited in the working of early reli- 
gion."* "While it is not easy to fix the exact idea of 
holiness in ancient Semitic religion, it is quite certain 
that it has nothing to do with morality and purity of life. 
Holy persons were such, not in virtue of their character, 
but in virtue of their race, function, or mere material con- 
secration."^ "Holiness under such relations is no more 

1 W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 90. 
2 Ibid., p. 132. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 173 

than an epithet of convenience to distinguish places 
objects, or persons reserved for use in connection with 
religious rites, from other places, objects, or persons 
employed for ordinary purposes."^ Much nearer to many 
of us comes the ceremonial and external connotation of 
holiness as connected with scrupulous observance of the 
rules of caste, and of the functions of worship. As sin 
may stand in the thought-relation of ceremonial unclean- 
ness, breach of rule, contact with external defilement; so 
holiness, the converse of sin, may signify precision of 
religious conduct, unbroken liturgical regularity, success- 
ful self-protection from prohibited contacts. As such, 
undoubtedly, it has both advantages and disadvantages, 
from an ethical point of view. Its strength is in its 
consistent and scrupulous discharge of that which is 
regarded as obligatory; and often the fulfillment of cere- 
monial duty and the solicitude to escape ceremonial 
defilement are connected with an earnestness and courage 
that are at once a rebuke and an example to others. Its 
temptation is to non-ethical satisfaction in precision of 
form, with neglect of esoteric righteousness ; making clean 
and fair the outside of life, while within may be much 
uncleansed thought, abnormal volition, and unresisted 
moral evil. Still nearer to some of us may come that 
conception of holiness which represents a philosophy of 
negation, and reflects the effort, by self-abstraction from 
an illusory world, to wither up the springs of desire which 
presuppose reality, to uproot the will to live, to hasten 
release from the wheel of existence. The beautiful attend- 
ant of that unworldly life of abstraction and contempla- 
tion sometimes is a universal sympathy which, making 
the joys and sorrows of others of more importance than its 

1 ASKWITH, Christian Conception of Holiness, pp. 103 fif. 



174 Barrows Lectures 

own, fills life with gentleness and compassion, leaving no 
room for hatred or uncharitableness, for anger or revenge/ 
In each of the types just considered there is an element 
easily assimilated in the Christian conception of holiness: 
in that which dedicates certain places, times, and things to 
the special uses of religion, calling them holy; in that 
which recognises the importance of outward acts of wor- 
ship and the value even of physical separation from defile- 
ment; and in that which, seeking to live above and apart 
from the vain and .transitory elements of the world, inter- 
ests itself in gentle and consoling ministration unto others. 
But the essence of the Christian conception of holiness, 
like the essence of the Christian conception of sin, is not 
external and ceremonial, but inward, ethical, spiritual. 
The seat of moral evil is the will; sin is the erroneous 
self-assertion of the ego against the Divine order of life: 
even so the seat of holiness is the will; the essence of 
holiness is normal relation to God. If one will take this 
thought and, entirely without prejudice, partisanship, or 
theological dogmatism, examine its foundations and the 
conclusions to which it points, I believe that every mem- 
ber of the great, unorganised brotherhood of love and 
earnestness, which includes all of every faith who desire 
the well-being of humanity, will see the beauty of holiness 
as Christ interprets and gives holiness, and will acknowl- 
edge it to be the primary need of the world. For, as I 
apprehend the scope and nature of the Christian idea of 
holiness, my reason compels me to admit its beauty, and 
would compel that admission, if I were not a Christian. 
It is, intrinsically, a rational idea, devoid of that which is 
arbitrary, mechanical, unreal. It is noble in its elevation ; 
rising up to the very heights of God, and inviting man to 

1 Cf. Dhammapada, Sacred Books of the East, Vol. X; also E. Caied, op. cit., 
Vol. I, pp. 356 fE. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 175 

ascend those heights without presumption and to realise 
his kinship with the Infinite Self. It is full of hope, and 
outlook, and the possibility of happiness. It is philo- 
sophically valid, founded on presuppositions of the unity 
of being. It is an idea of power, connecting itself with 
the most abstruse problem of human existence and under- 
taking to contribute to its solution. It has the note of 
universality, teaching nothing that is divisive or sectarian, 
but only that which is of world-wide significance and 
world-wide advantage. 

In this spirit of liberal appreciation may we approach 
the Christian conception of the Holy Life, seeking first to 
apprehend the foundation upon which it rests. Undoubt- 
edly the deepest and broadest element in that foundation 
is the absolute beauty of the character of God. God is 
Light and God is Love. We have seen in an earlier 
lecture that Christian belief in the personality of God is an 
intellectual necessity. Beginning where Hinduism begins, 
in an approach to the Infinite by the path of negation, 
denying one limitation after another — God is not this, and 
not this — Christianity arrives where Hinduism arrives, at 
the undifferentiated, unqualified Absolute. But there its 
sense of the greatness of God forbids it to stop ; for the 
simplicity of the unqualified Absolute, of an impersonal 
God without attributes, appears to it less compatible with 
infinity than self-realisation in the terms of infinite per- 
sonality. That self-realisation, to be Divine, must be 
ethically consistent; a perfect Life of Truth, unlimited 
by any shade of err our, undimmed by any thought of sel- 
fishness. The goodness of God is the corner-stone of this 
philosophy. Whatever man may be, whatever mysteries 
life may present, God is good ; in Him is no darkness at 
all ; with Him is no variableness ; from Him cometh 



176 Barrows Lectures 

every good and perfect gift ; even the power of God is 
conditioned upon righteousness ; He cannot deny Himself. 

Reaching this conclusion by the path of philosophy, 
the Christian finds its verification in history and in 
experience through Jesus Christ, the self-revealing God. 
In the Person of Christ all moral beauties and glories 
meet. To Him we apply those ancient words of eulogy; 
"Chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely.'* 
The resources of language exhaust themselves in the 
attempt to do justice to the ethical personality of the 
historic Christ. Symmetry, balance, harmony, splendour 
of expression, mark the outgoings of His nature. Every 
quality, action, word reveals a Being consistent with 
Himself and with ideal excellence. As an historic Person 
Christ attracted contemporary attention by various notes 
of distinction ; by the power of His words that drew, even 
from hostile lips, the admission, "Never man spake like 
this man;"^ by His control of the elements of nature, 
causing men to cry out, "What manner of man is this, 
that even the winds and the sea obey Him ? "^ by the dark- 
ness and the earthquake at His Cross, that forced from a 
Eoman soldier, inured to scenes of horror, the words : 
"Truly this was the Son of God.'" 

But . as, in the perspective of history, we behold the 
separate words and actions of Christ drawn together and 
co-ordinated in the form of concrete Personality, it is not 
the sanity and sweetness of His sayings nor the efficiency 
of His deeds that seem most wonderful. It is the holy 
perfectness of His Selfhood ; not that He speaks the truth, 
but that He is the Truth ; not that He goes about doing 
good, but that He is Incarnate Holiness. His holiness is 
not ceremonial propriety; for more than once He breaks 

1 John 7: 46. 2 Matt. 8:27. 3 Matt. 27:54. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 111 

with ceremonial propriety, rising above it into transcendent 
perfection. His holiness is self-identification with His 
own teachings, that "the sum of goodness is to be in 
right relations towards the Father in heaven ; to act as 
He acts in the world ; to follow His guidance in the 
heart ; to merge self in the sense of a Divine Presence ; 
to do not our own will, but the will of Him that sent us ; to 
love God with heart and soul and strength ; to love men 
as also children of God and so brethren, as partakers of 
the same inspiration and sent to the world for the same 
purpose."^ As time passes away, bearing into distance 
and obscurity the small and great of the earth, this Holy 
Christ passes not away. Others who have caught His 
spirit and imitated His example recede, and the imme- 
diateness of their contact with us gives place to the 
ethereal survivals of memory. But He continues, in the 
forefront of contemporary experience, a present Power, a 
life-making Spirit, an abiding Holiness, a perpetual Dis- 
closure of the moral Essence of God. "He that hath 
seen Me hath seen the Father."^ I say then that the 
first and deepest foundation of Christian holiness is not 
some remote commandment of the past, but the absolute 
moral beauty of the character of God, perpetually revealing 
itself in the present power of the Living Christ. With a 
great departed Master of Balliol I affirm: "Holiness has 
its sources elsewhere than in history." 

In correlation with this element of the Christian con- 
ception of the Holy Life stands the moral reason of man, 
with its power to estimate ethical values and to make 
rational appeals to conscience and will. It is characteristic 
of Christianity to exalt the dignity of man. If it should 

1 Percy Gaedneb, Exploratio Evangelica, p. 194, 

2 John 14: 9. 



178 Barrows Lectures 

seem to any of my learned hearers that to attribute per- 
sonal reality to the finite individual is less honourable to 
man than to regard finite individuality as illusion and 
man as a transitional name for the Absolute, it must be 
shown, on the other side, that the kind of personal reality 
attributed by the Christian religion to man does not dis- 
connect him from God and is not inconsistent with a 
modified form of monistic philosophy. For man is of 
common essence with God, according to Christian belief ; 
in God he lives and moves and has his being. A very 
ancient Scripture says of the sons of men : " God hath set 
eternity in their heart;"* and another: "Man is the 
image and glory of God.'^^ The evidence of this commu- 
nity of essence is the moral reason in man ; the dis- 
criminating knowledge of good and evil ; the ability to 
apprehend, approve, and assimilate holy thought and holy 
action; "to judge," as one felicitously has said, "of the 
worth and dignity of being. "^ By this gift of the moral 
reason man alone, it is believed, of all the orders of being 
upon the earth, enjoys a certain correspondence with God 
that makes possible the influencing of his life by the 
Divine Life, in ways for which no basis exists in the case 
of animals. In Holy Scripture this differentiation of man 
from animals, through the gift of the moral reason, is 
made the occasion of touching appeals for his recognition of 
this higher life within himself. "I will instruct thee and 
teach thee in the way which thou shalt go ; I will guide 
thee with Mine eye upon thee. Be ye not as the horse 
or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose 
trappings must be bit and bridle to hold them in, else 
they will not come nigh thee."* 

lEccl. 3:11, R. v. margin. 
21 Cor. 11:7. 

3 Of. AsKwiTH, Christian Conception of Holiness, p. 36. 

4 Ps. 32:8,9. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 179 

In attributing to God and man a correspondence of 
moral essence not shared by animals, Christianity makes 
philosophical implications that lead away from one of the 
most ancient, most widely diffused, and most influential 
conceptions of religion — the transmigration of souls and 
their reincarnations within the bodies of animals. I desire 
to be understood as speaking with reverence of some of 
the great moral ideas comprehended in the transmigratory 
belief; such as continued existence, retributive justice, 
and the persistence of the results of our actions. I am 
well aware also of the respect and tenderness toward all 
forms of animal life inculcated by that belief, and of the 
repugnance with which. the sensibilities of the East con- 
template the wholesale destruction of animal life by Wes- 
tern nations for commercial purposes and the supply of 
food. With that repugnance I find myself in sympathy 
for other reasons. I believe that the almost universal 
Western practice of consuming animal food has clogged 
and retarded some of the finer possibilities of that part of 
the human race; has subtracted from the spiritual side 
possibly as much as it may have added on the physical 
side ; has created an undesirable artificial adaptation and 
artificial necessity which probably, after so many genera- 
tions of participation, cannot be altered, but is none the 
less to be deplored. I believe that the cultured Eastern 
mind excels that of the West in power for sustained con- 
templation and subtle analysis of Divine things, and it is 
not improbable that that clarified mentality is the fair 
flower of unnumbered generations of abstinence from the 
flesh of animals. I long for the day, when the vegetarian 
East shall bring the same contemplative power to bear 
upon the mysteries of Christian Revelation that it has 
consecrated so long and so reverently to the Upanishads 



180 Barrows Lectures 

and the Gita. While the Christian view of finite person- 
ality, involving the self-conscious reality and endurance 
of the human soul, precludes the necessity for transmigra- 
tion, and so takes away from animals a certain potential 
significance, which otherwise they possess; it is certain 
that the spirit of essential and non-local Christianity 
toward them is one of sacred consideration ; that not a 
sparrow falls to the ground unnoticed by the Father;^ and 
t'hat the instincts, emotions, and rights of animals are 
commanding in the West increasing attention and 
respect. 

But, to resume my argument: From the Christian 
point of view, holiness in man is founded in the moral 
reason, wherewith he judges of the dignity and worth of 
life ; wherewith he knows good as good, and the Goodness 
of God, mediated to His understanding in the Person of 
Christ, as the ideal Goodness; the Eight above which 
there is no more perfect right ; the Way apart from which 
there is no more excellent way. From the conviction of 
right, apprehended in the moral reason, issues the demand 
of conscience upon the will; the man's rational apprecia- 
tion of holiness as it is in God demanding to be trans- 
lated into action by the will, the executive power of self- 
conscious personality. 

But while, in a perfect human life, the correspondence 
between man and God would be constant and inevitable, 
as the correspondence between the burnished image in a 
placid lake and the sun in a cloudless sky (every element 
of God's Holiness being mirrored in the moral reason and 
reflected by the will), in actual experience, sin, the per- 
version of the will through erroneous suggestion, opposes 
that normal end, disobeying the heavenly vision, resisting 

IC/. Matt. 6:26; 10:29. 



Ideas of Holiness aud Immortality 181 

the demand of conscience, darkening the understanding 
with counsels of folly. Thus arises the moral conflict of 
our inward life, the battle with temptation, the spiritual 
travail that cannot be allayed by ceremonial observances 
nor quieted by outward works of penitence. It is the 
revolt of self against self; of the will, inflamed by abnor- 
mal suggestions, against the moral reason, convinced of 
the excellence of Christ and the beauty of holiness. It is 
a struggle realised by the noblest natures. Saints and 
apostles have known it, crying out against the bewilder- 
ment and disorder of their moral forces: "The good that 
I would I do not, the evil which I would not, that I do. 
I delight in the law of God after the inward man ; but I 
see another law in my members, warring against the law 
of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of 
sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am. 
Who shall deliver me from the body of this death !"^ 
The instinct of the soul in that experience is to cry for 
deliverance, to invoke a power not itself; for within itself 
abnormality prevails. The moral reason, the appointed 
seer of the inward life, whose function is to behold God, 
to receive His imprint, and to direct the will, is now defled 
and pinioned by the will, which, inebriated with the wine 
of base corporeal suggestion, commits mutiny in the sanc- 
tuary of reason. To whom then shall the soul go but 
unto God? Whence shall it find deliverance and the 
attainment of holiness but through Him who is the Author 
and the Ideal of holy character? 

Here, then, is the third, and completing, element in the 
foundation of the Christian conception of holiness. Not 
only is there a revelation, permanently present in the 
Living Christ, of the absolute moral beauty of the character 

1 Rom. 7:19-23. 



182 Barrows Lectures 

of God ; not only is there in man the power of the moral 
reason, the seat of ethical judgments upon the dignity 
and worth of life, the mirror of Divine excellence; but, 
that this potential correspondence of the human with the 
Divine may not forever be nullified through the power of 
natural instincts to influence the will, making it produc- 
tive of sin and sin's bitter wage of personal and social 
misery, there is an indwelling of the Divine Spirit in the 
spirit of man. The soul becomes a shrine of God, and 
the will, once the coveted prey of restless and inconse- 
quent instincts, is fortified against animalistic impulses, 
educated in the habit of righteousness, surrounded with 
an atmosphere of moral incentive emanating from the life- 
giving Spirit within; so that a man may say: "I live, yet 
not I; Christ liveth in me."' That this condition of 
Divine indwelling may exist coincidently with the full 
possession of the rights and liberties of finite individuality 
is attested by experience and approved by philosophy. 
They that have entered into this life of holiness know it as 
something more than the sphere of the elementary instincts 
of kindness, compassion, gentleness, and patient endur- 
ance. Desirable and excellent as are those instincts, the 
holy life, in Christian experience, stands for more than 
these. They know it also as something more than the 
unaided action of the moral reason, contemplating and 
approving the excellence of God. They know it as Power, 
personal Power not themselves, taking up its abode in the 
soul, exercising its authority over the will, and establish- 
ing a protectorate of peace throughout the whole realm of 
the ethical self -consciousness. This is the abiding of the 
Comforter, the indwelling of the Infinite Spirit in the 
finite spirit, under the law of the unity of Life. 

IC/. Gal. 2:19, 20. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 183 

He came sweet influence to impart, 

A gracious, willing Guest ; 
Where He can find one humble heart 

Wherein to rest. 

And every virtue we possess, 

And every conquest won ; 
And every thought of holiness, 

Are His alone.^ 

Such being the foundation on which the Christian con- 
ception of holiness is built, its characteristic notes of 
expression correspond therewith. The consideration of 
these shall occupy the remainder of this lecture. In pre- 
paring to state the modes in which, according to the 
Christian ideal, the holy life finds expression, I am entirely 
unconscious of theological bias. I. conceive myself to be 
one of a large circle of men, representing all the greater 
religions, who in common have been led by the influence 
of modern physical and social science to regard life in 
this present world as full of magnificent possibilities, 
involving the betterment and elevation of mankind. 
These possibilities are largely unfulfilled because man- 
kind staggers under a burden of disability, an element in 
which, if not the chief element, is moral evil. To cope 
with this evil, relieve this disability, and help our brother- 
men to realise the good of life is our united desire. But 
we lack power to accomplish our end. The inertia of 
moral evil is too great to be dispelled. The millstone of 
sin drags heavily on the neck of humanity. Who can 
break that inertia? Who can cut that millstone away 
from man and let it plunge into the depths of oblivion ? I, 
as one of the many who ask these questions of terrible 
import, am giving my answer — the best and only answer 

1 Hareiet Aubek, 1829. 



184 Barrows Lectures 

that I have to give. Of theological bias I am uncon- 
scious; for academic controversy I have no heart. I 
have only love, and faith, and a desire to help toward 
answering questions that press for answer, not in India 
alone, but in every nation, even in nations that have 
a thousand years of Christian history behind them. My 
answer contends that Christ alone has power to accom- 
plish the end for which we all pray, and this contention 
is supported by the argument from experience and the 
appeal to fact. Notwithstanding all the perversions 
and accretions and spurious representations which have 
marred the history of Christianity, involved its good 
name, retarded its expansion, and arrayed many against 
it in deep distrust, Christ, the living Christ, goes on day 
by day, doing what, so far as I can learn, no other power 
is doing. He is doing the thing that we all want to have 
done : cutting loose the millstone of sin from the necks of 
individuals in all parts of the world, in all conditions of 
life ; and building up, in millions of individual instances, 
the type of character, the species of motive, the kind of 
personal power, which, if it were reproduced in ourselves 
and in all others, would absolutely relieve the world of its 
disability and make of this present life a new creation, a 
City of God on earth. 

In making this presentment I have reached the point 
where a brief account must be given of the characteristic 
notes of the holy life in a soul over which Christ should 
completely prevail. To this I now address myself. A 
holy life embodying the Christian ideal would assert 
itself characteristically in its attitude toward sin, toward 
self, toward God, toward society, and toward a future 
state of being. 

The characteristic attitude of the holy life toward sin 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 185 

is determined by the Christian conception of sin. That, 
as we have seen, is not identical with ceremonial pollution 
and external nonconformity. The seat of sin is the will; 
the primary sphere of sinfulness is subjective. *'Out of 
the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, 
fornications; these are the things which defile a man."^ 
The attitude of the holy life toward sin, therefore, 
involves the elements of appreciation, antagonism, and 
sorrow. The appreciation of sin is progressive in Chris- 
tian experience: it corresponds with progressive appre- 
ciation of the character and purpose of God. As one 
grows in the knowledge of Christ, becoming, by the 
practised senses of the spiritual life, more competent to 
discern the height and depth, the length and breadth, of 
Divine love, a corresponding advance is made in the 
appreciation of sin. In the clearing view of the wisdom, 
excellence, and beauty of all that the mind of God pur- 
poses for man, one feels the malign significance of every 
egoistic self-assertion that resists that Will and demands 
the fulfillment of volitions governed by physical instinct or 
unethical desire. The gravity of sin is felt and under- 
stood. It is more than contact with a ceremonially defiling 
substance or omission of a prescribed liturgical act; more 
than a functional ebullition of natural impulse. It is 
despite done to the will of God ; a dislocation of the Divine 
order that makes for well-being and protects the rights of 
all men. With the appreciation of sin is coupled antago- 
nism toward it. This is not blind resistance of natural 
impulse, nor abstention from evil through fear of punish- 
ment, although regulation of impulse and dread of conse- 
quences may assist the growth of antagonism. In the holy 
life the ultimate foundation of antagonism is the moral 

1 Matt. 15 : 19-20. 



186 Barrows Lectures 

reason, which judges of the dignity and worth of being, 
measures the selfishness that can subordinate religious 
and social duty to the sway of passion, beholds the glory 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ, aspires to look upon 
sin and righteousness as with the mind of Christ, and to 
pronounce at a tribunal of rational judgment the same 
sentence of condemnation against sin that Christ uttered 
by His words, His example, and His death. With appre- 
ciation and antagonism is joined, in the holy life, sorrow 
for sin. As the Christian views sin objectively, the bitter 
fountain of the world's woe, the plague eating into its life, 
his sorrow becomes a Christlike grief. His spirit groans 
within him to think of the ever-growing increment of 
misery, of the "hell and destruction" upon earth that are 
"never full."^ Sometimes he longs with Christ to give 
his life for the sin of the world — a longing many times 
fulfilled in the annals of Christian missions. But, as the 
holy life recognises sin within itself, finds that apprecia- 
tion and rational condemnation of sin do not at all times 
prevail against its deceitful entrance, sorrow becomes 
humiliation — the ashes of repentance for wrong done 
against God, self, and the world. 

The characteristic attitude maintained toward self by 
the holy Christian life involves questions that reach to the 
depths of any philosophy of the individual and the world. 
It is not possible for one to enter the Orient in an open- 
minded and sympathetic spirit and look upon the practice 
of Yoga, or the ascetic contemplation of self, without being 
greatly moved. As a spectacle of religious concentration, 
of calm indifference to physical pain and pleasure, of 
transcendence over material and conventional ends in the 
absorbed pursuit of an unworldly object, it may be that 

iProv. 27:20. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 187 

the Yogi of India has no peer. But more moving than 
his outward demeanour is the philosophical basis upon 
which he stands. His interests are not in the life that 
now is, because this life, to him, is illusion, not reality. 
He is as one whose senses are withdrawn from objects of 
sense; whose mind, inwardly concentrated, seeks vacuity, 
suspension of relations, that thereby it may attain eman- 
cipation from the phenomenal and illusory self, to know 
and to become the Absolute Self. It is impossible, I say, 
for one who enters the Orient in a sympathetic spirit, to 
look without emotion upon the detachment and concentra- 
tion of mind, the renunciation of externals, represented in 
the mighty paradox of Yoga — the extinction of self in 
order to the attainment of Self. Two thoughts form 
themselves as I meditate upon the religious possibilities of 
races capable of producing and sustaining for thousands 
of years the asceticism of Yoga; thoughts to which, I 
trust, expression may be given in this presence, without 
offense, inasmuch as I speak with true respect. I marvel 
to think of the transcendent expression that might be 
given to some of the profoundest principles of the religion 
of Christ, if natures capable of assimilating the Yoga 
philosophy could assimilate and, with equal power, prac- 
tise a faith that holds among its most precious treasures 
words like these: "He that loveth his life loseth it, and 
he that hateth his life in this world keepeth it unto life 
eternal."^ "Set your mind on things above, not on things 
on the earth, for ye died and your life is hid with Christ 
in God."^ With this thought comes another: As science, 
physical and social, enlarges our view of the possibilities 
of this present life, one sees what advance might be made 
in the Orient toward the removal of the disability of moral 

1 Cf. John 12 : 25. 2 Col. 3 : 2, 3. 



188 Barrows Lectures 

evil if the attitude toward self, peculiar to the Christian ideal 
of the holy life, could be taken in matters relating to 
this present world by the leaders of a race capable of 
pursuing the mystical path of Yoga. 

The Christian attitude is determined by the inter- 
action of the ideas of individuality, consecration, stew- 
ardship. To claim the consciousness of individuality is 
not to commit one's self to a dualistic philosophy abhor- 
rent to Eastern minds and, in an increasing degree, to 
Western thinkers also. The essential thought in indi- 
viduality is uniqueness ; that each person is an expression, 
real and unique, of a Divine intention ; that each person 
fills a place in the world not filled by any other, and is 
an expression of the mind of God not duplicated else- 
where. Such a conception of self, co-ordinated with ideas 
more distinctively Christian, invests life with solemn 
meaning and with immediate value. ^ A person is more 
than a fleeting apparition. Beneath the transitory form 
of life which to Christian as well as to Hindu seems but 
as the vapour that appeareth for a little while and then 
vanisheth away, is reality, the reality of Divine intention. 
A man is an incarnate thought of God. And not inten- 
tion only ; but unique intention. By the thought of God 
I am what I am. In me God expresses what He expresses 
in no other ; what, apart from me, shall remain unex- 
pressed. This is my individuality. This makes my place 
in life. I may be in errour, but it seems to me that this 
conception of self, a positive to which an impressive nega- 
tive is found in the Yoga philosophy, offers hope to the 
world and relates itself rationally to the present problem 
of the world. If our brothers are to be lifted to better 
things, if the millstone is to be taken away, this shall be 

1 Cf. ROTCE, The World and the Individual, passim. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 189 

achieved by men who feel that God is thinking His 
thoughts through them and doing His deeds by them 
here and now. 

With the idea of individuality is joined consecration, 
in the Christian conception of the holy life. Consecra- 
tion is the appreciation of self, by the moral reason, as a 
unique expression of God's thought ; and it is the response 
of the will thereto. Perceiving the Divine origin and the 
unique quality of my individuality, I will to yield my 
whole being to God, that His intention may be fulfilled 
in me. But, in the attempt to carry this volition into 
effect, my will is assailed by corporeal and other sugges- 
tions, prompted by the instincts of my bodily self. I am 
tempted by erroneous self-assertion to sin against the 
Divine order. How shall these instincts be dealt with ? 
At this point theories of asceticism diverge. Some say 
that they shall be crushed and extirpated ; that even the 
instinct toward life, the will to live, must perish. But, in 
the Christian ideal of the holy life, corporeal instincts 
are normal, and even the cosmic body, the body of the 
flesh, is holy, a temple of God. Its instincts are not to 
be extirpated, but to be governed and guided by the 
higher law of the moral reason. Its care and culture are 
not to be refused, but maintained in all purity and clean- 
ness, as the care and culture of that which forever is con- 
secrated through the Incarnation of Christ. The body, 
as an element of the individual, is to be presented unto 
God, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable in His sight, 
which is our reasonable service.^ 

The thought of self, in the holy" life, finds completion 
in the idea of stewardship — stewardship inseparable from 
the remembrance of Christ as the suffering Saviour. "Ye 

IC/. Rom. 12:1. 



190 Barrows Lectures 

are not your own ; for ye are bought with a price, even the 
precious Blood of Christ ; therefore glorify God in your 
body and in your spirit, which are God's." ^ As we go 
back in our thought to find the meaning of this, I am 
sure that the intellectual consistency of that meaning will 
appear to those who, for other reasons, withhold their 
religious assent. From the point of view of the higher 
Christian thinking, the Divine repugnance toward sin 
finds its consummate expression in the terms of death, the 
Death on the Cross. Sin is repugnant to God because it 
is the self-injury of those He loves, whom He made for 
happy and enlarging correspondence with Himself. To 
save them from that self -injury is the mission of the suf- 
fering Christ. "He died for all, that they which live 
should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him 
which died for them and rose again. "^ The thought of 
self receives its deepest tone from the Cross. The con- 
ception of individuality has indeed power to dignify life 
with the sense of uniqueness and to appeal to the moral 
reason ; but the vision of the suffering Saviour conquers 
the heart and brings the affections to the Feet of God. 
Life no longer is one's own. Henceforth it belongs to 
the Love that speaks through Death; "the Son of God, 
who loved me and gave Himself up for me."^ 

This analysis of the thought of self prepares one to 
understand the attitude of the holy life toward God. It 
springs out of the sense of individuality already consid- 
ered. Each finite self being a unique expression of the 
Divine thought, an unduplicated image of God, self turns 
to God as the child turns to its father, obeying the law of 
the unity of life. A fine expression of the attraction 
founded on kinship of nature is given in the lines of a 
Christian hymn : 

U Cor. 6: 19, 20. 2 2 Cor. 5: 15. 3 Gal. 2: 20. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 191 

Kivers to the ocean run, 

Nor stay in all their course ; 
Fire ascending seeks the sun ; 

Both speed them to their source ; 
So, a soul that's born of God 

Pants to view His glorious Face, 
Upward tends to His abode. 

To rest in His embrace.^ 

It will be seen that this approach to God is different 
from an a priori metaphysical approach by the path of 
speculation. The intellect may exercise itself upon the 
abstract idea of God, may define in the terms of specula- 
tive thought the nature of a metaphysical Absolute ; but 
this is very different from the promptings of feeling, the 
Godward suggestions, that press upon the will from 
depths of consciousness below the levels of analysis. Such 
involuntary desire has its true and not unworthy symbol 
in the fundamental instincts of physical being: *'As the 
hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul 
after Thee, O God."^ It is different, also, from ceremonial 
approach to the shrine of a deity, in order that the inter- 
ests of the worshipper may be advanced ; for example, the 
approach with gifts to awaken the attention of the god 
and secure his favour ; or the approach with propitiatory 
sacrifices, to turn away his wrath. So long as religion 
continues in the earth, these ceremonial approaches will 
be made ; but it is to be observed that they stand in quite 
another category of action from the instinctive outgoing 
of the finite soul to Him whose Life is the fountain of its 
own life ; whose Thought finds expression in the unique- 
ness of each individual personality. 

This instinctive outgoing of feeling toward God is the 
normal experience of life. Where it seems to exist not, 

1 SiB Egbert Seaoeave. 2 pg. 42 : i . 



192 Barrows Lectures 

hindering conditions often may be found. Some specu- 
lative or ceremonial conception of God, imposed upon 
consciousness by the authority of tradition, may bind 
the soul with metaphysical bonds and repress its spon- 
taneity; or the habit of sin, which is continuous self- 
assertion against the Divine order, may create a sense of 
alienation from the life of God. Nothing proves more 
conclusively that sin is abnormal than spiritual estrange- 
ment from God. "What have I to do with Thee?" was 
the cry of him possessed of a demon, as Christ drew near.^ 
It is typical of life, which everywhere, until the demon 
of sin is exorcised, recoils from God. But day by day 
Christ, the life-making Spirit in the world, is loosing the 
bonds of human souls. The spell of speculative pessi- 
mism He dissolves by the warm, intelligible revelation of 
Himself, while to the estranged and sullen evil-doer He 
advances, not with the sentence of death, but with the 
offer of life upon His lips. Whoever touches Him with 
the hand of faith is made whole. Mists of speculation 
vanish before the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ. Estranged sinners become as little children, 
escaping from the loneliness of wrong- doing unto the 
Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. So the spirit returns 
to God who gave it ; the being that He made for Himself 
ceases from restlessness, to rest in Him. 

This attitude of the holy life toward God, springing 
from the sense of individuality, realises itself continuously 
in the terms of communion, whereof Prayer is both the 
expression and the instrument. Prayer has been called 
"the Christian's vital breath." The symbol is not infelici- 
tously chosen, for prayer is the functional expression 
of our individuality. We pray because God is the Foun- 

iC/. Mark 5: 1-20. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 193 

tain of our being, in whom we live and move. Prayer 
may take on forms prescribed by custom and may reflect 
ideas evolved from philosophy. These are externals, the 
husks and wrappings of a substance too vital and esoteric 
to be analysed. Prayer is not a custom acquired from 
without, but a function emerging from within. It is not 
even a prescription of the moral reason. We do not pray 
because the moral reason affirms that prayer is rational 
or that prayer is duty ; we know only that it is an element 
of individuality to pray, that it is in the nature of things 
to pray, and that, if we should hold our peace, the stones 
would cry out. The verification of prayer as a normal 
function comes with the experience of its power. The 
conviction strengthens that "more things are wrought by 
prayer than this world dreams of." Prayer is not for the 
Christian as the cry of the priests of Baal to a distant 
god, who may be sleeping or journeying, and whose 
attention must be arrested. Nor for him is it as the act, 
meritorious in itself, which by repetition takes on cumu- 
lative values. It is the instrument of the communion of 
life, the medium of thought-transmission, the channel of 
Divine gifts. Its use we learn by experience. By it we 
speak with God, as a man speaks with his friend. In 
it we worship, giving to Him the consent of the will, the 
allegiance and appreciation of the moral reason. Through 
it we disburden our soul of pent-up grief and fear; of 
sorrow, contrition, solicitude for others. And as light, 
streaming from the sun, fills the well of the eye, so 
thought and influence flowing from the Seat of Power 
make prayer their channel to the finite soul; influence 
that builds up the inner life by inspiring the will to just 
volitions, that replenishes hope, regulates instinct, 
enlightens judgment, consoles sorrow, and often extends 



194 Barrows Lectures 

its benign offices to other lives, whom, by the might of 
faith, we have incorporated with our own in the act of 
intercession. 

Lord, what a change within us one short hour. 
Spent in Thy presence, can prevail to make; 
What heavy burdens from our bosoms fake. 
What parched grounds refresh as with a shower! 
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; 
We rise, and all, the distant and the near. 
Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear; 
We kneel how weak, we rise how full of power! 
Why then should we do ourselves this wrong, 
Or others, that we are not always strong? 
That we are ever overborne with care, 
That we should ever weak or faithless be — 
' Anxious or troubled — when with us is prayer; 
And joy and hope, and courage are with Thee!* 

Such being the nature of communion with God, it is 
inevitable that the feeling which animates the Christian 
in his relation to God shall be holy love. That love, like 
much else most real and most distinctive in the life that 
I am endeavouring to describe, is the fruit of experience. 
"We love because He first loved us."^ We have seen 
and felt for ourselves that transcendent Love incarnating 
itself in Christ, disclosing itself by the supreme test of 
suffering; we feel it now, in the ever-present life-making 
Spirit, who gives forth upon us day by day influence 
wholly constructive, promoting the blessedness, elevation, 
and efficiency of existence. Our response to this love 
becomes at length inevitable. We would not and we cannot 
withhold an answering affection. We know Him, whom 
we have believed, and are persuaded that He is able to 
guard that which we have committed to Him.^ And so 

1 Archbishop Trench. 2 1 John 4 : 19. 3 Cf. 2 Tim. 1 : 12. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 195 

we give Him our fullest confidence; we implore His for- 
giveness when we fall; we seek His guidance in every 
problem of conduct; we count upon His sustaining grace 
in temptation and hardship; and when, the journey of 
life being over, the mysteries of the unseen world con- 
front us, into His hands we commend our spirits. I 
make no apology for the unreserved belief in the Per- 
sonality of God to which, by these words, I stand com- 
mitted. The grounds of that belief already have been 
discussed in these lectures. For the present, abstaining 
from philosophy and speaking in the vernacular of com- 
mon life, I ask only if there be not in this conception of 
God and in this attitude toward Him that which tends to 
sweeten and sustain the soul of man in the life that now is. 
Such being the spirit of love developed in a holy life, 
according to the Christian ideal, by deep communion 
with God, the full significance of that loving spirit does 
not appear until we consider it in its attitude toward 
society. It is not impossible that the social attitude, the 
relation in which it sets man toward man, is the final 
test of the value of a religion. It may, of course, be con- 
tended, with reason, that the social attitude maintained 
by a religion depends upon its conception of the nature 
of man and of the present world. If, for example, it is 
the theory of that religion, many of whose members I am 
now addressing, that the present world and the individu- 
als therein are parts of a vast illusion; that joy and sor- 
row are alike unreal; that the only real interest is mental 
concentration upon self in order to the suspension of 
illusory relations and the escape from finitude by knowl- 
edge of the Absolute, it is evident that the conception of 
the holy life may in that religion develop on non-social 
lines, its end being emancipation from personal bonds. 



196 Barrows Lectures 

From this point of view the path of holiness may lead 
away from social contacts into esoteric solitude, and the 
ascent toward God may be measured by grades of reli- 
gious abhorrence toward those far down in the depths of 
ignorance and illusion. If this be a principle in the phi- 
losophy of caste, it is not without logical justification. 
On the other hand, one of the great religious systems of 
the world eliminates alike a metaphysical Absolute and 
a finite self; maintains that all life, ''whether of gods or 
of men or of brute creatures, is essentially and finally the 
same, and that each form of life is merely one link in a 
series of successive existences and inseparably bound up 
with misery ; and that man's great object must be to get 
rid of individual existence." ^ The chief end in this reli- 
gion is knowledge ; not the knowledge of God in order to 
union with the One Self, but knowledge of the real 
nature of things in order to final beatitude in the extinc- 
tion of desire.^ In the pursuit of this end caste is oblit- 
erated with its logical self- withdrawal from social contacts, 
and, in its place, the service of human lives by kindness 
and gentleness becomes paramount as a means, together 
with purity, meditation, and noble conduct, to the attain- 
ment of that knowledge which is the condition of beati- 
tude. 

Between these two religions the attitude of Chris- 
tianity, especially in its conception of the social duty of 
a holy life, stands in the most interesting relations of 
thought, yet with qualities completely distinctive. On 
the one hand, with Hinduism, the Christian ideal of 
holiness is contemplative. It is the life hid with Christ 

iCf. Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, 4th ed., p. 30; Sie M. 
MoNiEB Williams, Buddhism, p. 90; Bishop Coplestone, Buddhism, Primitive 
and Present, p. 114. 

2 Cf. Professoe Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 100-107. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 197 

in God; the life withdrawn from the world and its illu- 
sive vanities, separated unto Grod, called to sainthood; 
looking not at the things that are seen, but at the things 
that are not seen: looking for the blessed hope and the 
Beatific Vision, when He shall appear and we shall be 
like Him, seeing Him as He is.^ On the other hand, 
with Buddhism, the Christian ideal of the noble path is 
love; beneficent, compassionate, patient, magnanimous 
social love ; that suffereth long and is kind ; that thinketh 
no evil ; that rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the 
truth ; that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things; that never faileth.^ If the 
Christian ideal of the holy life in respect of its social 
attitude were to be represented upon earth by some being 
completely free from local prejudice, and uncontaminated 
by worldly policy, it would assimilate much that others 
believe and practise ; yet in such recombination, and with 
such infusion of distinctive qualities, as would make the 
result unique. It would be found that the ideal of 
Christianity is not the obliteration of social distinctions. 
Such obliteration, were it possible, would be an offense 
against reason. Differentiations inhere in the nature of 
things. There are diversities of gifts, of functions, of 
intellectual and social possibilities, running through all 
life, conditioning society. To obliterate them is impos- 
sible; to ignore them is irrational; to defy them is unjust. 
Christ sought not to obliterate them, but to regulate 
them upon a basis of social love. The essential spirit of 
Christianity in this matter is well expressed in the words 
of St. Paul: "Let every soul be in subjection to the 
higher powers. Eender to all their dues: tribute to 

IC/. Col. 2:3; 2 Cor. 4:18; Titus 2:13; lJohn3:2. 
2C/. lCor.l3:4-8. 



198 Barrows Lectures 

whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to 
whom fear; honour to whom honour. Owe no man any- 
thing, save to love one another; for he that loveth the 
other hath fulfilled the law."^ The social order being 
found to contain distinctions that exist in the nature of 
things, the aim of a perfectly holy being would be to 
serve, in accordance with a principle of love, the best 
interests of each individual member of this complex social 
order. That which would make this aim of social service 
distinctive would be the influence of the two fundamental 
convictions, that individuality is real and that existence 
is good. The attitude toward society would be deter- 
mined by the same force that determines the attitude 
toward self — the sense of individuality. Already we 
have seen that that implies uniqueness: that each person 
is an embodiment, real and unique, of a Divine intention, 
fills a place in the world not filled by any other, and is 
an expression, a thought, of God, not duplicated else- 
where. This gives significance and dignity to man as 
man, apart from the accidents of social dijfferentiation. 
The human being — not a caste, not a race — would be the 
unit of value, because of what a human being stands for 
as an individual. "Every man is so related to the world 
and to the very life of God that in order to be an indi- 
vidual at all, a man must be very much nearer to the 
Eternal than in our present life we are accustomed to 
observe."^ From the point of view of this ideally holy 
being whom we are describing, every man would be 
regarded as standing in relation to that one divine Event 
which implies the kinship of humanity with God ; namely, 
the Incarnation of God in Christ. 

1 Cf. Rom., chap. 13, passim. 

2 EoYCE, The Conception of Immortality, p. 5. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 199 

In the words of a great Christian teacher, who was also 
a great lover of humanity: "The Incarnation is God's 
witness to the ideal relation of all men to Himself. For 
the knowledge and enjoyment of this relationship every 
man was created. To those therefore who have received 
the Christian Revelation there is in every man, no matter 
how mean and wretched his external condition, how feeble 
and neglected his intellectual powers, how coarse his 
habits, how gross his vices, the possibility of realising 
this wonderful life."^ With this conception of individu- 
ality would be joined the belief that existence is good and 
not evil in itself; that man was made with an instinct for 
appropriating and using life, and not for renouncing and 
escaping from it; that this present life is a field for 
rational enjoyment, effective service, and the upbuilding 
of the splendid structure of character which has been 
defined as "the personality built up within by successive 
acts of volition."^ It would be the conviction of this 
being that that which has made the world sad and life- 
sick is not any quality inherent in life, but removable 
disabilities projected upon life by abnormal relations 
toward God. The certainty of this would be confirmed 
in his mind by the historic Incarnation of Christ, as 
affirming man's kinship with God; by Christ's world-wide 
interest and affection; by His eagerness to draw men to 
God and His condemnation of sin by word, example, and 
death; and by the cumulative evidence that the Risen 
and Living Christ does possess power to make existence 
good and beautiful for vast multitudes of people. It 
would be obvious, therefore, to this ideally holy being 
that the whole world has the right to share in the good 

1 Schmidt, Social Results of Early Christianity, Preliminary Essay, by R. 
W. Dale, p. 17. 

2PEBCT Gardner, Exploratio Evangelica, p. 31. 



200 Barrows Lectures 

of existence and to know the way thereto; and so, with- 
out a thought of unseemly intrusion into the domain of 
other faiths, without an interest in the worldly rivalry of 
proselytism, with the one loving wish to make men know 
the worth of their own lives to God, to themselves, and 
to their fellow-men, he would go everywhere, declaring 
the glad tidings of the kingdom of God in the name of 
Him who came that we might have life and that we might 
have it more abundantly. And if the sweetness and sim- 
plicity of his purpose were thus understood, I believe that 
he would be welcome everywhere, as a messenger of hope, 
a son of consolation. 

In closing this lecture upon the Christian conception 
of the Holy Life, wherein I have considered as character- 
istic notes of expression its attitude toward sin, toward 
self, toward God, and toward society, it remains to speak 
of that which is necessary to complete the significance of 
all that has gone before — the attitude of the Holy Life 
toward a future state of being. On any theory of human 
personality, it will be admitted that man is differentiated 
from other orders of animal life by his ability to contem- 
plate death in its relation to his present state, and to 
forecast the occurrence of his own death as an experience 
through which he must expect to pass. Perhaps every 
conceivable type of emotion has been stirred by the con- 
templation of death. To some it has seemed to be the 
rude interruption of life's plans, the dismal terminal of 
its efficiency, the fountain of sorrows, the destroyer of 
hopes. Others have welcomed death as a resting-place 
in the weary pilgrimage of existence, a vaguely blessed 
exit from the labyrinth of illusion, a release from suffer- 
ing, a door of hope. But when, passing beneath these 
emotions and the human instincts that produce them, we 



Ideas of Holiness and Immorfality 201 

try to estimate the deeper philosophical significance of 
death considered as the final fact in our present state of 
being, it is evident that we must look, not upon the mere 
physical incident of the dissolution of the body, but upon 
our belief concerning the existence that follows the event, 
which, for want of a clearer knowledge of its content, we 
call Death. The philosophical significance of death can 
be stated only in the terms of life continuing beyond the 
grave. This the great thinkers of the more masterful 
religions have recognised. 

It is not possible to state the Christian view of immor- 
tality and to point out its inspiring effect upon our present 
life without referring to one of the dominant conceptions 
of Indian philosophy — reincarnation, or the transmigra- 
tion of the soul. I need not say that I make this refer- 
ence with profound respect. It was said by Professor 
Max Mtiller: "The idea of immortality was the common 
property of all Indian philosophers. It was so com- 
pletely taken for granted that we look in vain for any 
elaborate arguments in support of it."^ I may perhaps be 
allowed to say, as a Western, that no aspect of Indian 
thought awakens within me greater reverence and admira- 
tion than this "unwavering belief in future and eternal 
life." It imparts to cultivated and esoteric Hinduism an 
impressive gravity and patience. Life projects itself 
beyond death into the mists of incalculable distance, a 
path too vast for measurement; if one may use Matthew 
Arnold's words, a task "too great for haste." The con- 
sciousness, born of belief in reincarnation, that the present 
sojourn within the habitable world is but one brief step 
in a tremendous procession of existences, issuing from the 
past and extending into the future, gives to the higher 

1 Max MOIjLEB, Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, p. 138. 



202 Barrows Lectures 

Hinduism an unworldly point of view not far from sub- 
limity. It rebukes the narrow, unchastened materialism 
that abandons itself to the pleasures of time, dismissing 
the problems of eternity with the shallow argument: 
"Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."^ Such 
animalistic contentment with the present is abhorrent to 
the higher Hinduism for two reasons : it ignores the prin- 
ciple of Karma, consenting to live as if there were no 
hereafter, wherein the consequences of action shall sur- 
vive and work themselves out to their conclusions; it 
ignores also the final goal of being, which is liberation 
from the finite, illusory self through the perfect knowl- 
edge of Brahma, and chooses to live as if the physical 
were the only real, and the unseen and infinite were fig- 
ments of the imagination. 

I am quite ready to agree that nothing in Christian 
thought is more striking in its appeal to the ethical 
imagination than the principle of Karma, as applied to 
the problem of future existence in the metaphysic of the 
higher Hinduism. To yield one's self consistently to its 
influence, one would think, must furnish complete deliver- 
ance from the base fascinations of physical indulgence, 
and "perpetual motive to a stern and melancholy righteous- 
ness." Whether it does, in fact, operate thus in the lives 
of those who live under its influence I am incapable of 
judging; but I agree with my learned predecessor 
in this Lectureship when he says: "The theory of a 
soul, which, at the bidding of its own vices and virtues, 
wanders through a multitude of bodies and dwells in an 
endless succession of miserable or happy states, holds the 
Hindu in an iron grasp which neither the lapse of time 
nor the change of religion can loosen. In its light life 

iC/.l Cor., 15:16-34. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 203 

becomes tragic; individual existence may seem trivial, 
but the vision of the infinite series of births and deaths, 
with their infinite degrees of glory or shame, all inex- 
tricably interwoven with this moment and its transient 
acts, may well move or appall the most realistic imagina- 
tion."^ It is because my ethical sense responds to the 
Hindu doctrine of Karma and acknowledges its force that 
I find deep satisfaction in presenting, in these closing 
sentences, some elements of the Christian view of immor- 
tality and of its power to enhance the dignity, sanctity, 
and joy of life in this present world. I am glad to 
believe that my learned hearers can the more readily 
apprehend that whereof I speak, because their own reli- 
gious traditions are saturated with the conception of 
immortality. To get the Christian point of view, it is 
necessary to recall the postulates that have conditioned 
all our thinking in these lectures : the Personality of God 
and the reality of the finite individual; God, not imper- 
sonal being, but self-conscious, self -determining Life; 
and the soul of man, not an illusion, but a veritable 
emanation from the Absolute, endowed with the real 
properties of individuality; real in its uniqueness; each 
soul a unique embodiment of Divine purpose, capable of 
correspondence and communion with its Author. Upon 
this basis Christianity builds its joyful doctrine of 
immortality. Man is, in a sense, necessary to God even 
as God is necessary to man; each soul is precious in 
God's sight as a means for His self -fulfillment : "A com- 
munion like this is not born for death. The more pro- 
found and penetrating it is, the more complete God's 
self-impartation and man's capacity of receiving it, so 
much the more clearly is man bound up with the abiding- 

JFaikbaien, "Race and Eeligion in India," Contemporary Review, Vol. 
LXXVI (1899), p. 162. 



204 Barrows Lectures 

ness of God. 'This is life eternal, to know Thee, the 
only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent/ 
If man's immortality is involved in his power of knowing 
God as the holy and merciful One, it becomes doubly 
sure when God's fellowship with him has the personal 
significance implied in Fatherhood and sonship. The 
recognition of it is not an inference from that fellowship: 
it is a realisation of what the fellowship means." ^ 

Christianity is, essentially, the religion of life and 
immortality — the ever-blessed life of the immortal indi- 
vidual. As individuality is regarded a boon and not a 
curse, a glad and desirable reality, and not a hindering 
and burdensome illusion, so the continuance and con- 
summation of individuality beyond death in the unveiled 
presence of God our Father is deemed the greatest of all 
gifts. The gift of God, the royal bounty, is eternal life.'^ 
And this gift, in all its fullness of good, is made the sure 
possession of each obedient soul in and by Christ, the 
Manifested God, the Incarnate Life-giver. "I am come," 
He declares, "that they might have life and that they might 
have it more abundantly."^ "I am the Resurrection and 
the Life; He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
Me shall never die."* The continuance of this blessed 
life of the immortal individual is the coronation of per- 
sonality. "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give 
thee a crown of life."^ Why is there this difference 
between Hindu thought and Christian thought regarding 
the continuance of finite personality after death ? Why 
is the idea sorrow and weariness to the one, joy and 

1 FoEEEST, The Christ of History and of Experience, p. 15. 

2 Cf. Rom. 6 : 23. 3 John 10 : 10. 
4 John 11: 25, 26. 6 Rev. 2: 10. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 205 

triumph to the other ? The answer lies at the very heart 
of our respective conceptions of being. To the Christian 
the soul is the offspring of God, and its individuality is 
not a blinding veil to be rent in twain and cast aside; it 
is a glorious endowment to be maintained forever. Death 
is but a physical incident in life. The eternal life of 
personality is realised here and now by the enlightened 
Christian. The assurance of his own destiny comes to 
him in and through the Resurrection of the Son of God. 
In Christ Incarnate he beholds the stamp of reality set 
upon his own humanity, so that manhood is no illusion, 
but a fact most precious in the sight of God. In Christ 
Incarnate he sees the corporate Representative of the 
whole human race, experiencing earthly life, tasting 
human death, for every man; then rising from the grave 
in power, bursting its bonds, casting away its cords, and 
proclaiming unto all, who, through holy obedience, are 
in union with God: "Because I live, ye shall live 
also."' 

That life into which we enter after death is not con- 
ceived by a Christian's thought in the terms of reincarna- 
tion and transmigration. For him there is no painful 
wandering through the vicissitudes of rebirth ; no labori- 
ous succession of lives to be lived, each weighted with the 
arrears and obligations of an incalculable past. For he 
has found in Christ, who loved him and gave Himself up 
for him, the absolution and remission of sins, and the 
perfect and peaceful union with the life of God. For 
him, therefore, the conception of immortality is a vision 
of peace that passeth understanding ; of the forgiveness 
and putting away of sin through the mercy and Sacrifice 
of God Himself ; of the liberation of the soul from mortal 

1 John 14: 19. 



206 Barrows Lectures 

infirmity and its upbuilding in the likeness of God's 
character ; of everlasting increase of knowledge, unend- 
ing growth of serviceable power, sublime companionship 
of like-minded souls, eternal intimacy with the God of 
love. 

To Christian experience the value of this belief, as 
adding to the worth of existence, is inestimable. It 
clothes with importance the life that now is, making 
it essentially one with eternity. The arbitrary division 
introduced by physical death is obliterated, and one 
treads the world and takes up the duties of time as 
seeing Him who is invisible, as feeling the power of an 
endless life. The incongruity and vanity of sin are dis- 
closed by the light of this larger thought, and the eternal 
worth of each word and act of purity and love and sacri- 
fice. The dignity of conduct is augmented ; the brevity 
of the earthly span is more than overbalanced by the 
eternal significance of all lofty and unselfish effort. It 
becomes worth while to plan one's life carefully and to 
live it nobly. It might be said of many who have real- 
ised this truth and have lived in the light of it : 

They dreamt not of a perishable home 
Who thus could build. 

"For we know that if the earthly house of our taber- 
nacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."^ And if 
this be the inspiration for our present state, the outlook 
thus opened into the future is not less inspiring. For, 
amidst the transitions and uncertainties of this world, 
where life is often as the moving tent, we look not for a 
weary round of rebirths, wandering like homeless birds 

12 Cor. 5:1. 



Ideas of Holiness and Immortality 207 

upon the ocean's breast, over the tumultuous and inhos- 
pitable billows of existence ; we look for a City that hath 
foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God : 

Where light and life and joy and peace 

In undivided empire reign, 
And thronging angels never cease 
Their deathless strain ; 

Where saints are clothed in spotless white 
And evening shadows never fall ; 

Where Thou, Eternal Light of Light, 
Art Lord of all! 1 

1 GODFBBY ThEING. 



SIXTH LECTUKE 

EEASONS FOR REGARDING CHRISTIANITY AS THE 
ABSOLUTE RELIGION 

In entering upon the final lecture of this course I do 
not feel constrained to offer an apology for the theme 
herein proposed. I confide in the open-mindedness of the 
East not only to tolerate, but to consider, the presenta- 
tion of Reasons for Regarding Christianity as the Ab- 
solute Religion. This confidence, in which I permit 
myself to indulge, and by which I am dissuaded from 
offering an apology for my subject, is founded on convic- 
tions of the propriety of my motives in introducing this 
subject, and of the fairness and profitableness of a broad 
discussion of such a theme by educated men, whatever 
may be their private religious opinions. I know that I 
have not undertaken this lectureship in a controversial 
spirit. In nothing, thus far, that has been said has there 
entered one conscious impulse to disparage the beliefs of 
others or to "dispute about words to no profit." Nor 
have I for a moment held the attitude of aggression, a& 
one who, coming from the West, would impose the 
opinions of his own sect on men of another tradition 
and another training. Mine has been the ardour of a 
witness-bearer, speaking with joy and love the things that 
he has seen and heard; mine the zeal of a truth-seeker, 
courting the fellowship and counsel of those who, by other 
paths, are seeking the things that are above; mine the 
earnestness of a believer in the essential brotherhood of 
men and the universal reality of truth. 

I am convinced also of the fairness and profitableness 

208 



Christianity as the Absolute Eeligion 209 

of a broad discussion of this theme by educated men, 
whatever may be their private religious opinions. Even 
if the result of such a discussion were adverse to my own 
hopes and expectations, still should I rejoice in its occur- 
rence. For, as one desiring only the advancement of 
truth for the good of the world, I long not for the 
triumph of any set of opinions because they are my 
opinions, but only that whatsoever is the absolute and 
perfect truth may have free course and be glorified, unto 
the liberation and uplifting of the whole world. 

I propose therefore to offer reasons for regarding 
Christianity as the absolute religion. And I do so as 
presenting a legitimate religious question for discussion, 
assured that my auditors will accord me the privilege of 
saying what I have to say upon it. Where, indeed, could 
this question be discussed with such propriety and with 
such seriousness as in the ancient and religious East, the 
breeding-ground and home of all the greatest religious 
conceptions that have entered into the history and ex- 
perience of the world? Repeatedly have I referred, in 
these lectures, to the progressive spirit of some of the 
Indian newspapers regarding religious inquiry, and it is 
with pleasure that I quote the following words from a 
recent issue of the Hindu of Madras (July 19, 1902): 
"The teachers of the greatest religious opinions of the 
world are all of Asiatic origin, and in Asia religion is a 
more vital force than it is today either in America or in 
Europe." In an atmosphere so favourable to the discus- 
sion of religious problems, such a theme as that which I 
have the honour to propose is not only legitimate, but 
appropriate. One can conceive of circumstances where 
such a theme as mine could be proposed offensively and 
repudiated bitterly ; but among educated and philanthropic 



210 Barrows Lectures 

men this discussion must by its own intellectual buoyancy- 
rise above the low level of controversy and recrimination, 
and proceed in the region of rational investigation. If I 
offer reasons for regarding Christianity as the absolute 
religion, in so doing I invite a rational investigation of 
those reasons by men of learning and experience ; not in 
the spirit of bigotry, but in the liberal spirit of brother- 
hood, as befitting those who have a common solicitude for 
the well-being of the world. 

For it is an axiom among all who are interested in 
human well-being to desire the best and the most avail- 
able things, and to appropriate them without regard to 
the fact that they may be in use among those with whom 
we are not in sympathy. This is true in the realm of 
mechanical invention. Printing-presses, agricultural im- 
plements, locomotive machinery for land or sea, electrical 
appliances, know no political or racial boundaries ; they 
belong to the world, and the most far-seeing men in every 
nation demand the best machines for transacting the 
business of life, quite without regard to the place of their 
origin or the people by whom already they may be used. 
This is becoming more and more true in the realm of edu- 
cational science. The methods of the School, the Col- 
lege, the University, no longer are matters of local tradi- 
tion, but subjects of international discussion, comparison, 
and procedure. In the world-wide republic of letters 
there is no East nor West; no Europe, Asia, nor America; 
but the one brotherhood and guild of the students of edu- 
cation, eager to consider any method that is working 
successfully in any part of the world; ambitious, not to 
perpetuate ancestral practices, but to adopt and assimilate 
whatsoever makes for pedagogical efficiency. As I con- 
sider the evolutionary process which appears in the 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 211 

religious development of mankind, I can see no reason 
why the same principle which governs the mechanical and 
educational life of the race should not also prevail in the 
realm of religion. It is unquestionable that an evolu- 
tionary process is at work in the religious development of 
mankind. Forces that were not generated by any con- 
scious human agent, and that cannot successfully be 
resisted by any measure of conservatism, are working in 
the world, introducing new quantities and new terms into 
the problem of religion. May I illustrate this statement 
by calling attention to two particulars: the growth of 
tolerance, and the advance in the study of comparative 
religion ? 

The growth of tolerance is realised by looking back- 
ward upon the course of history and considering the de- 
crease of wars and persecutions undertaken in the name 
of religion. The earlier annals of the religions of the 
world are for the most part written in blood — the blood 
of conquest, or the blood of persecution, torture, and 
martyrdom. Through long ages of history men of dif- 
ferent faiths regarded one another as natural foes, to be 
subdued or to be exterminated. The obligation to smite 
with the sword in the name of religion, to coerce the sub- 
mission of faith by force of arms or by the infliction of 
physical anguish upon individuals, belongs to the history 
of East and West alike; and nothing is more ghastly in 
the record of religious oppression than some passages of 
Christian history upon the continent of Europe. It is by 
recalling these facts that we realise the growth of toler- 
ance. I do not say that, upon sufiicient provocation, 
wars of religion might not again break out, nor do I 
forget that, from time to time in various parts of the 
world, fanatical murders are committed. But it is quite 



212 Barrows Lectures 

certain that these sporadic instances of religious violence 
are condemned as abnormal by all enlightened communi- 
ties, and that the world has been carried upon the breast 
of a resistless current of tendency far past the time when 
the conquest or extermination of a people because of its 
religious opinions could seriously be entertained by any 
responsible government or permitted by the world- 
powers/ 

The evolutionary process at work in the religious de- 
velopment of mankind is illustrated also by advance in 
the study of comparative religion. Intolerance and igno- 
rance are kindred spirits. The ferocity of antagonism 
toward the faith of another often is measured by igno- 
rance of the content of that faith. The gulf that for 
centuries separated the West from the East was the lack 
of mutuality in the study of religions. I am bound to 
say that the philosophic East had in a measure explored 
Christianity long before the West undertook the study of 
the great non-Christian beliefs of the Orient. For long 
there was a Western intolerance, born of ignorant satis- 
faction with the local adaptations of a Europeanised Chris- 
tianity, that viewed the mighty East from afar as an 
indistinguishable heathendom, an arid plain of godless 
superstition. But from all circles of culture that veil 
of ignorance is passing away ; and in every seat of learn- 
ing where a world-wide interest in the humanities exists, 
the study of comparative religion is considered to be fun- 
damental, upon historical, philosophical, theological, and 
social grounds. Instead of bald ignorance of the path 
pursued by all the world's seekers after God except 
those of one's own household, in place of the daring 
dogmatism that could denounce as wholly false and 
unprofitable the attempts of generations of sages to 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 213 

deal with the problems of being and to construct a phil- 
osophy of life, there is deepening every day, in East and 
West, the desire to understand and to compare the fruits 
of our brother's thinking, the grounds of our brother's 
faith. 

It may be argued that both of these illustrations of 
the evolutionary process at work in the religious develop- 
ment of mankind point to a general decline in intensity 
of conviction and to the growth of a religious indifferent- 
ism to which all faiths appear alike and by which the old 
urgency of conscience in matters of belief is discarded. 
It may be said that the passing away of religious wars 
means that nations no longer attach sufficient importance 
to theological opinions to make them causes of armed 
conflict. It may be contended that the study of compara- 
tive religion has revealed such a measure of truth in the 
faiths of others as to undermine the reasonableness of be- 
lieving that there is one faith which is above every faith, 
one Divine Name which is above every name given under 
heaven among men. 

But not so do I interpret that evolutionary process 
which, like the silent omnipotence of the ocean tide, "too 
full for sound or foam," is affecting the religious devel- 
opment of the more enlightened races of East and West. 
I grant that decline in intensity of conviction is taking 
place in some quarters, and that there are large circles 
of culture whose confidence in their own inherited reli- 
gious traditions has been shaken by influences of science 
and cosmopolitanism, and whose minds have not yet found 
a system of truth sufficiently absolute to demand their 
allegiance; but these facts are not adequate to interpret 
that universal evolution of religious opinion now in 
progress, of which all open minds and honest hearts 



214 Barrows Lectures 

must be conscious. For I believe that never in the 
world's history was there a more settled conviction of the 
value of religion as a creative, developing, and protective 
force; never a more pronounced unanimity of opinion 
that religion — that which binds human life to God, that 
which makes God's power felt in human affairs — is for 
the eflficiency and exaltation of nations and of men. 

Furthermore, speaking as one more familiar with the 
prevailing forms of religion in Europe and in America, I 
believe that never in the history of the West was there a 
more firm conviction of the essential truth of the Chris- 
tian religion. The firmness of that conviction arises 
from its intellectual validity. It is not the blind credulity 
of ignorance; it is the chastened certitude of intelligence. 
Knowledge is at its high-water mark ; science is enthroned 
and sceptred in the West. Historical and literary critics, 
sustained by conscious integrity of purpose, have endured 
the disfavour of those who deprecated the scientific inves- 
tigation of the foundations of belief, and, by impartial 
research, have disclosed the impregnable solidity of 
those foundations. Today educated men of the West 
hold the faith of Christ, not as a fragile treasure that 
must be guarded from the rude onslaughts of unbelief, 
but as a fortress built upon the eternal rock, against 
which the gates of hell shall not prevail. To minds so 
persuaded the present religious evolution, marked by the 
growth of tolerance and the larger appreciation of the 
beliefs of others, portends something far different from a 
decline of conviction and a growth of indifferentism. It 
portends, rather, the growing assurance that in many 
things the seekers after God are nearer one another than 
they had known, and that in order to the proper treat- 
ment of the religious problem there must be a larger syn- 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 215 

thesis; a gathering together of those who have dwelt 
apart; a more generous confidence in one another on the 
part of all who are athirst for God; an attempt to grasp 
and to interpret the conception of an Absolute Religion. 
Evidently the first step toward that larger synthesis 
would be to agree upon the sense in which the word 
"absolute" may stand as the qualifying term of a religion. 
In presenting reasons for regarding Christianity as the 
absolute religion, my first solicitude is so to define that 
qualifying term as to avert misapprehension. The asso- 
ciation of the term "absolute" with the extreme type of 
monarchical government suggests mental images wholly 
incongruous with my present theme. An absolute mon- 
archy and an absolute religion are not by any possibility 
members of the same series of ideas. Their respective 
connotations are wholly different. The term "absolute," 
used to describe monarchy, stands for autocratic power, 
irresponsible authority, despotism. While, in the history 
of governments, an absolute monarch has from time to 
time used a form of religion as a channel and instrument 
of authority, attempting by the exercise of power to bind 
the conscience and coerce the spiritual subjection of men, 
every such association of absolutism with religious con- 
trol is abhorrent to my sense of right and to my intel- 
lectual conviction of the inherently free and voluntary 
character of true religion. When, therefore, in this lec- 
ture I employ the term "absolute religion," I disclaim 
all mental association with ideas of civil government, 
state authority, legal control, enforced submission of 
conscience. I approach the term from quite another 
point of view, and find it available for my purpose as a 
term of convenience, indicating the opposite of whatever 
is implied in the words "provisional," "local," "tempo- 



216 Barrows Lectures 

rary," and "approximate^" considered as words descrip- 
tive of the various religions of mankind. 

We can conceive of a religion that might answer to 
the descriptive term "provisional," in that it was consti- 
tuted for a specific function arising out of an emergency. 
Its range of vision was scaled down to the end it was 
designed to subserve; its ordinances and ceremonial were 
in their nature a concession to the limitations created by 
the existing emergency. While that state of emergency 
lasted, the provisional religion, like a provisional govern- 
ment, would be adequate; but, the restrictions produced 
by the emergency being removed, that religion forthwith 
and by force of circumstances becomes inoperative and 
obsolete, giving place to one which, if it be final and 
adequate in all other necessary relations, may be called 
"absolute." 

We can conceive of a religion as "local" — a tribal 
or national cult, springing from the soil, endeared by 
neighborhood sentiment, meeting the needs of those 
living within the tribal or national limits, yet lacking the 
note of universality; incompatible with the tradition and 
experience of a remote district; incapable of meeting 
needs created by other environments. If there should 
emerge a faith that seemed to appeal to all human life at 
the levels that lie beneath tribal and national distinctions ; 
a faith that met the needs of the most remote and unre- 
lated communities; that might be translated into the 
multitudinous tongues of the earth, yet ever utter itself in 
the one great vernacular of the soil — to such a religion 
one might give the title "absolute." 

We can conceive of a religion as "temporary" — ful- 
filling an honoured mission at a certain stage in the evo- 
lution of society, speaking with voices of consolation and 



Christianity as the Absolute Beligion 217 

admonition to man in certain phases of his development; 
and then in some of its elements outgrown; not dis- 
credited or disproved, but left behind by the progress of 
humanity; submerged by the rising tides of knowledge; 
superseded, as, in the days of old, Christ superseded 
John the Baptist, not by discrediting him, not by setting 
him aside, but by bringing in a larger truth that men had 
need of, a clearer light for which they prayed. That 
which thus should come in to feed the growing power of 
an advancing race might bear the title "absolute." 

We can conceive of a religion as *' approximate" — as 
the light of the breaking dawn, the portent and pledge of 
the full sunrise, the splendid forerunner of complete 
Revelation. Gloriously may it discharge its functions, 
with its seers and its saints hailing the perfect vision 
from afar, and confirming the faith of their generations 
with precept and prophecy. At last comes the full 
unfolding of the Divine, the Light that lighteth every 
man, coming into the world. In its ample glory the 
partial and the approximate are taken up, purged and 
assimilated into the perfect body of Truth, the fullness of 
Him that filleth all in all. 

By these differentiations of the term "absolute" in its 
association with religion we come at the important thought 
that the most distinctive note of the absolute religion 
would be universality; in relations so broad and compre- 
hensive that even to consider the theoretical possibility of 
such a beneficent gift to mankind is, for all true lovers of 
their race, like standing on some great headland of the 
mountains and beholding a serene landscape with all the 
wealth of the earth bathed in all the splendours of heaven. 
For the universality of the absolute religion would be 
more and higher than mere numerical extension. A 



218 Barrows Lectures 

religion might extend until its worshippers were as 
numerous as mankind and yet lack the essential note of 
universality. The universality of the absolute religion 
shall not be measured by the misleading standard of mil- 
lions of converts, but by its intrinsic capacity to meet the 
needs of man. Its universality shall obtain in other 
categories than those of mere numerical strength, even in 
its conception of God, its relation to time and place, its 
social ideal, and its concurrence with reality. 

In the absolute religion the conception of God must 
contain the note of universality. No tribal or national 
deity or group of deities will suffice, but one who in Him- 
self is ultimate, infinite, timeless; the high and holy One 
that inhabiteth eternity ; having the qualities of Person- 
ality that He may know and be known; in whom and by 
whom are all things; unto whom all hearts are open, all 
desires known ; from whom no secrets are hid ; under the 
sway of whose authority all worlds subsist; in the pres- 
ence of whose "far-beaming blaze of majesty" all men 
are equal ; to the all-embracing tenderness of whose heart 
all lives are dear; in the secret of whose purpose is the 
eternal volition of love that all men shall be saved and 
come to the knowledge of the truth. 

In the absolute religion the relation to time and place 
must be universal. In the evolution of the religious con- 
sciousness of the race doubtless there is need of pro- 
visional forms of faith that arise to meet emergencies, and 
of local or neighborhood cults and customs that spring 
out of the soil, endeared by the power of association and 
meaning much to those who understand them. To the 
end of time, I believe, these local adaptations will ii^ some 
form continue; they represent a psychological necessity 
that cannot be ignored. But the absolute religion, while 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 219 

it may take up into itself and assimilate many of these, 
shall in its essence be greater than they. For it shall be 
bound neither by time nor by place. Its truth shall not 
be provisional and temporary, but part and parcel of the 
eternal being of God, and co-enduring with Himself. 
Nor shall its substance be of exclusive relevance for a 
segment of the race, a gospel for the East or a gospel 
for the West; but it shall be a world-message, addressed 
to man as man, and, whether stated in the terms of the 
East or of the West, losing none of its universality. 
Every nation and kindred and people and tongue shall 
claim that message as its own; every soul under the 
heavens shall appropriate it as a birthright. 

In the absolute religion the social ideal must rise to 
the proportions of universality. This it cannot do unless 
it be founded on a conception of the value of the indi- 
vidual man as broad as humanity itself. For in the 
building of a social ideal the unit of construction is, in 
the last analysis, not the state, not a church, not a class, 
not even the family, but the individual life, with its rights, 
its worth, and its destiny. A social ideal can be no better 
than its estimate of the worth of a single soul. A social 
ideal that makes as its chief end the protection of a class 
at the expense of inferior classes, or the propagation of a 
system by sacrificing the weak to the strong, or by keep- 
ing down the many that the few may rise, whatever it 
may exhibit of the glittering attributes of power, lacks 
the first credentials of universality. The absolute religion 
must honour all men because each is a unique expression 
of the Divine; must acknowledge intrinsic value, and 
accord personal rights in connection with every member 
of the race. With such a foundation beneath it, its social 
ideal shall rise in lines of beauty exceeding the most 



220 Barrows Lectures 

superb of your own architectural masterpieces. Its 
motive shall be fraternal love — the desire that each son 
of man shall know the meaning and the possibilities of 
his own existence, and enjoy a fair chance to compete for 
a share of the common good; its spirit shall be compas- 
sionate, co-operative, constructive; its aim shall be the 
betterment of the race by the redemption and the educa- 
tion of the individual. 

Finally, the universal note in the absolute religion 
must be its concurrence with reality. Knowledge is a 
tide more resistless than the sea ; it eats away the substance 
of dreams and delusions as waves devour sand palaces 
built upon the shores by children. It submerges barriers 
set up against it, closes over them and passes by them, as 
if they never had been. It tests every theory and every 
faith of man with pitiless pressure, and only that can 
stand in its swelling current which has deep anchorage 
or rock foundation. As time advances the momentum of 
this tide waxes. The two great augmenting forces are 
the historic spirit and the inductive method of investiga- 
tion. Under the influence of these forces every docu- 
ment, every dogma, is challenged, every claim of religious 
authority explored, every custom traced to its source. 
Venerable antiquity, traditional holiness, official sanction, 
usage, have no power to protect any faith from this all- 
searching, all-enfolding tide of knowledge, which, with an 
impartiality that seems cruelty at first, but in the end 
reveals itself as love, judges between truth and errour, spar- 
ing only that which concurs with reality, that which is 
part and parcel of the one self -consistent truth. 

And now, whilst we have before our minds these con- 
notations of the term "absolute religion," it behoves us 
to ask a pertinent question: Can there be conceived the 



Christianity as the Absolute Beligion 221 

existence of an Absolute Keligion in the world as we 
know it ? If there be reasons inherent in the constitution 
of the world and the nature of man forbidding the possi- 
bility of a religion that shall have sufficient breadth and 
scope to become a basis for the religious experience of 
the race, then my present discussion is purely theoretical 
and academical. Without doubt such prohibitive reasons 
appear to exist. The great religions that now interest 
the world long have lived apart from one another, sepa- 
rated by physical boundaries, or mutual ignorance, or 
ancestral distrust. As of old it was written of the two 
contiguous districts of Palestine, Judaea and Samaria, 
"the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans," so 
faiths more or less antagonistic than those of Jew and 
Samaritan have ignored or hated one another, as if their 
adherents were beings, not of different races only, but of 
different worlds, having no thought or experience in com- 
mon, no affinity even of natural instinct. But the methods 
of modern thought forbid us to accept the proposition 
that these lines of cleavage in the religious history of the 
race close the discussion on the possibility of an absolute 
religion ; that, because they exist and long have existed, 
therefore must they ever continue. The principle of 
evolution does not allow us to dogmatise on this or any 
kindred problem of the future. We must wait, and 
ponder, and hope. When, by a strong effort of intellect 
and will, we break from the beaten tracks of custom and 
prejudice, and climb to the heights of vision where that 
which is can be seen in its wholeness, and be measured 
by that which might be and should be, there appear to us 
certain grave and beautiful reasons which at least make it 
possible to conceive the existence of an absolute religion 
in the world as we know it. To present some of these 



222 Barrows Lectures 

reasons for your consideration is my earnest desire. 
While you may reject my conclusions, I know that you 
will at least hear my premises. 

The existence of an absolute religion becomes con- 
ceivable for those who believe, as I most profoundly 
believe, the essential unity of the human race, and the 
possibility of a true union of hearts and a mutual compre- 
hension of feelings and ideas, between those who by 
racial ancestry, by language, by colour, by social institu- 
tions, by religious traditions, and by all other outward 
signs of difference are separated as widely as the East is 
from the West. Lately we have been furnished, not by 
an Oriental, but by a European,^ with the pessimistic 
phrase, "the mental seclusion of India." He tells us 
that his phrase represents the result of thirty years' 
observation and reflection; that Indians and Englishmen 
are fenced off from each other by an invisible, impalpable, 
but impassable, wall, which is not difference of manners 
or of habits or of modes of association, but is a deliberate 
seclusion of the mind with jealous, minute, and persistent 
care ; that this seclusion of the mind is universal, result- 
ing in a loneliness which, increased by the discipline 
of ages, is not an incident, but the first essential of char- 
acter. Against this dismal doctrine of segregation it is 
no surprise to hear such European protests as that which 
recently has been given in an Indian magazine by the 
Bishop of Bombay.^ But it is with especial joy that I 
note the rejection of the doctrine by liberal Indian senti- 
ment. The alleged *' mental seclusion" is vigorously 
analysed, and the conviction is announced in an able edi- 
torial,^ that no section of the human race is incapable of 

1 Cf. Meredith Townsend, Asia and Europe, pp. 146-54. 

2 Cf. East and West, July, 1902, pp. 906-14. 3 Cf. The Hindu, July 22, 1902. 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 223 

fuller intercourse with and better understanding of all 
other sections; "that human nature everywhere is the 
same;" and that, wherever colour prejudices are dispelled, 
there is no difficulty of intercourse and nothing mutually 
unknowable. Such a contention I believe to be in accord 
with the fundamental laws and facts of nature. The 
"brotherhood of the race" is, to me, not a cant phrase, 
but a psychological formula, representing the fact that con- 
ditions all human life, justifies those sentiments of uni- 
versal love that rise in hearts emanicipated from preju- 
dice, interprets those fine and manly affinities that make 
it possible for men trained on opposite sides of the globe, 
aliens in their respective types of culture and in their 
forms of belief, nevertheless to look into each other's eyes 
and know that in the deepest recesses of experience and 
feeling they understand one another and are one. 

The existence of an absolute religion becomes still 
more readily conceivable for those who, believing the 
essential unity of the race, take note of the universality 
of religious sentiment. As hunger and thirst and the 
primary forms of natural affection repeat themselves 
throughout the world, giving an involuntary kinship of 
physical need to all the races, so is there a kinship of a 
more subtle kind, founded in the attributes and actions 
of that in man which we call his religious nature. The 
presence of spiritual ideas in human personality is uni- 
versal, be they the vague perceptions of the basest sav- 
agery, or the myths and customs of a semi-barbaric state, 
or the highly organised religious systems of civilised 
races. The witness to the religious element as a necessary 
part of the constitution of humanity is consistent and con- 
vincing. "Religion,'* says Principal Fairbairn, "is so 
essential to man that he cannot escape from it. It besets 



224 Barrows Lectures 

him, penetrates, holds him even against his will. The 
proof of its necessity is the spontaneity of its existence. 
It comes into being without any man willing it, or any 
man making it; and, as it began, so it continues. Few 
men could give a reason for their belief, and the curious 
thing is that when it is attempted, the reasons are, as a 
rule, less rational than the beliefs themselves."^ It is 
when we permit the mind to dwell upon a thought like 
this that there comes to remembrance, unbidden, that mas- 
terful saying of St. Paul, spoken in Greece almost twenty 
centuries ago, but true today on the banks of the Missis- 
sippi or the banks of the Ganges: "God hath made of one 
blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of 
the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, 
and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek 
the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find 
him, though He be not far from every one of us."^ As I 
reflect that everywhere my fellow-beings are sharing with 
me the impulses that suggest God and prayer and duty, I 
find myself asking: Why should it be incredible that He 
who implanted these universal impulses shall at length, 
in the fullness of time, answer them and satisfy them by 
the revelation of an absolute religion as broad in its scope 
as the religious intuition of humanity ? 

The existence of an absolute religion becomes not only 
conceivable, but desirable, when one reflects upon the 
practical situation that would emerge if the common reason 
and judgment of the race were, through the evolution of 
knowledge and through the immediate influence of God, 
to arrive at a conviction of the universal validity and abso- 
luteness of a certain set of religious conceptions. The 
thought of such a religious consensus on the part of long- 

1 The Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 196. 2 Acts 17 : 26, 27. 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 225 

divided nations and races is in itself so startling that for 
a time the mind is unable to assimilate it and to subject 
it to rational analysis. Time and usage have established 
the several great religions as permanent factors in the 
life of the world. Their histories bulk as the major part 
of the world's history. We cannot conceive the past 
development of the race except in the terms supplied by 
the growths and rivalries of its religions. The antecedent 
assumption, therefore, is that what so long has endured 
must continue forever; that the permanence of the lines 
subdividing the religious experience of the race is a fore- 
gone conclusion. This assumption of the permanence of 
long-established conditions is one of the most deep-seated 
of our impressions. Nothing offers a more stubborn 
resistance to the law of evolution. In one of the books 
of the Old Testament this assumption of permanence is 
well voiced by a pessimistic philosopher, who is supposed 
to speak: "The thing that hath been, it is that which 
shall be ; and that which is done, is that which shall be 
done; and there is no new thing under the sun."^ All 
of which perpetually is being contradicted by the prin- 
ciple known as evolution, and now everywhere recog- 
nised as the law governing earthly affairs. A rational 
interpretation of life, individual and collective, can be 
made only in the terms of progress ; fresh recombination 
of existing elements with elimination of outworn material ; 
continuous unfolding of new conditions, with emergence 
of new results. The familiar maxim, "History repeats 
itself," has been discredited by the principle of evolution; 
for repetition becomes impossible where all historical 
elements are in the evolutionary flux. Successive events 
may bear resemblance, yet each in turn is new, for the 
conditions that produce it are new. 

lEccl 1:9. 



226 Barrows Lectures 

Taking this into account, and remembering likewise 
the unprecedented growth of knowledge, of scientific 
method, of cosmopolitan spirit, and of international inter- 
course, it becomes possible to entertain and to analyse a 
proposition, at first so startling as to appear incredible. 
It may be that amidst the changes now in process — 
changes so great and radical that the most daring 
eighteenth-century social prophet could not have her- 
alded them — the greatest change of all, the change por- 
tended by the growth of tolerance and the new interest 
in the study of comparative religion, shall be the com- 
mon advance of the educated world toward a point where, 
from the ancient citadels of their several faiths, open- 
minded lovers of God and of the world's betterment shall 
see a common truth, shall desire a common experience, 
shall come and stand as brothers on the common ground 
of one absolute religion. 

As our mind adjusts itself theoretically to such an 
issue, we apprehend its reasonableness and its blessedness. 
Such a consensus and convergence upon one absolute reli- 
gion would cast no discredit upon earlier and less univer- 
sal forms of faith. It would not require us to revile the 
beliefs of our forefathers, nor to impugn their intelli- 
gence or their sincerity. A man when he is full-grown 
puts aside many things which meant much for his boy- 
hood; but the putting aside of that which, in the evolu- 
tion of life, ceases to meet our present need involves no 
dishonour to what, having done its work, is now, rever- 
ently, laid down. Nor would convergence upon one 
absolute religion presuppose uniformity of religious ex- 
pression or religious practice — a condition as little to be 
desired as to be anticipated. It would mean participation 
in the substance of common truth, with local adaptations 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 227 

of that common possession to each sharer in the substance. 
The individuality of nations, the sacred heritage of na- 
tional spirit and custom, in no wise would be impaired by 
the prevalence of an absolute religion; for no religion 
could maintain its tenure of the title "absolute" that 
lacked that universality in relation to time and place 
which made it in the highest and holiest sense of the 
phrase, "all things to all men" — a religion wide and 
all-embracing as the world itself. 

The blessedness of such an advance as we are now con- 
sidering is as great as its reasonableness. The Spirit of 
God, we must believe, has moved in the world during all 
the painful vicissitudes of its history, ever seeking the 
advancement of man, and working, through the inspira- 
tion of chosen souls, for the unifying of the race by the 
power of the truth. The obstacles in the path of that 
unification have been many. Perhaps the greatest have 
been the isolation of nations and the absence of a common 
ethical standard. The nations have lived apart, walled in 
by the battlements of prejudicial ignorance, or meeting in 
the bitter rivalries of war As we look back upon the 
Middle Ages, the face of the world is like a landscape of 
fortified peaks separated by yawning abysses. The intel- 
lectual Renaissance had not come; the modern social 
Renaissance had not appeared; the fellowship and com- 
munity of nations was an unrealised conception. Hatred, 
misrepresentation, astounding absence of correct knowl- 
edge distorted and retarded the growth of the world. Nor 
was there any approach to a common ethical standard. 
Ignorant of one another's religions, denouncing and de- 
spising each other as pagans and infidels, men, made in 
the image of one God, shunned each other as the progeny 
of devils, and fought like beasts in wars of extermination. 



228 Barrows Lectures 

I do not permit myself to overestimate our present de- 
gree of emancipation from these distressing conditions, 
nor to indulge the pleasing fiction that even the most en- 
lightened nations are fully purged from the old blindness 
and bitterness. I fear that many a just indictment could 
be drawn against the ethics and the politics of nations 
that claim high rank in the moral scale. But this I 
know, that the One God is moving in His world, and that 
a new day is dawning everywhere. The resistless tide of 
knowledge is doing its work, and what that work is time 
shall show. The bonds that knit nations together are 
strengthening. The points of contact relating remote 
centres of moral power are multiplying between every 
sunrise and sunset; the cosmopolitan spirit is in the air. 
What blessedness for the world if, even as I speak, the 
seekers after God were beginning to see eye to eye, to 
sheathe the swords of spiritual conflict, and to give the 
energy, once spent in recrimination, to the greatest work 
that open-minded men can undertake — the finding of one 
absolute religion; the acknowledgment of one absolute 
standard of righteousness, the union of hearts in the 
brotherhood of truth and in the comradeship of service: 
"One Lord, one faith, one baptism ; One God and Father 
of all."^ 

If one of my learned auditors, by following my argu- 
ment thus far, should be prepared to admit the theoretical 
proposition of the reasonableness and blessedness of an 
absolute religion as a means for the unification and bet- 
terment of the world, he will perceive that the question 
which immediately presents itself is: Does any existing 
religion appear to combine the characteristics required 
for such immense service to humanity? Keligions are 

lEph. 4:5, 6. 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 229 

not produced at the will and bidding of man. They are 
not manufactured to meet occasions. They are produced 
by incalculable forces working in incalculable orbits; and, 
in so far as they partake of truth, they are the works of 
God. It may be said of every religion containing any 
measure of the eternal truth that its beginning is mys- 
tery. Even so Christ spoke of the mystery of the Divine 
Life revealing itself in the finite soul: "The wind bloweth 
where it listeth ; and thou hearest the sound thereof but 
canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth ; so is 
every one that is born of the Spirit." ^ Hence, if we were 
agreed to converge upon an absolute religion, we must 
first seek it among religions that exist. For we have no 
power to make it at our pleasure. We might indeed con- 
struct a theological system, but it would not be a religion 
until life were breathed into it; and who can give life 
save One, the Living One, which is and which was and 
which is to come, the Almighty? Religions are begotten, 
not made. 

Assuming, then, that there existed among educated 
and philanthropic men in the several leading faiths of 
the world a desire to converge upon a common religious 
basis and to work together for the redemption of humanity ; 
assuming, further, their willingness to examine impar- 
tially these several leading faiths with the view of ascer- 
taining which of them combines in itself the requisite 
characteristics for a service of such stupendous import to 
our race, the first step would be to determine what char- 
acteristics are, in the nature of the case, essential. And 
this readily may be done when we reflect upon the present 
state of the world. We have referred to the growth of 
the cosmopolitan spirit and the prevalence of interna- 

1 John 3: 8. 



230 Barrows Lectures 

tional intercourse. The isolation of nations is, relatively, 
a thing of the past. But this does not imply a decline 
of the national spirit. On the contrary, the individuality 
of nations, though emancipated from the old crudeness of 
expression, has lost nothing in intensity. We are more 
jealous of our traditions, because we realise how easily 
those traditions, if unguarded, might be swept away in 
the flood of cosmopolitanism. We are cautious about 
laying ourselves under obligation to other nations, by 
adopting their institutions, their manners, or their beliefs, 
lest thereby we compromise our national individuality 
and barter away our national birthright. Hence the first 
question to be raised in determining the possible uni- 
versality of any existing religion is the question of origin. 
The history of twenty centuries proves conclusively that 
no religion can attain universality by force of arms. 
There is not power enough in any section of the world to 
impose its beliefs by authority upon the whole world. 
And the most superficial acquaintance with present con- 
ditions assures us that the West never will abandon 
its religion in favor of one imported from the Orient, nor 
will the proud and thoughtful East ever humble herself 
to acknowledge the supremacy of a Western cult. 

Near to the question of origin, and with difficulty 
separated from it, is the question of philosophical method 
as affecting the possible universality of any existing 
religion. Thinkableness is the unseen foundation of each 
religion, and the psychological reason for its existence. 
A given religion survives in the experience of those who 
practise it because its propositions, however vague or full 
of mystery, can be construed in intelligible terms of 
thought. It is lifeless in another community because its 
fundamental propositions are unthinkable in the terms of 



Christianity as the Absolute Beligion 231 

thought which there prevail. Ditferences of philosophical 
method are, without doubt, the highest barriers that 
divide members and groups of the human race. Colour 
lines, variations of language, geographical or political 
boundaries, are relatively unimportant barriers, when 
compared with the most fundamental distinctions of 
philosophical method. The author of the phrase "the 
mental seclusion of India" probably realised the height 
of this barrier as standing between East and West, and 
succumbed to the belief that it is insurmountable. With- 
out in the least sharing his discouraging opinion, it may be 
granted that the chief progress toward the union of hearts 
in East and West must be on the lines of philosophical 
method, in finding a common basis for the connotations 
of the terms of thought. And it may be accepted as an 
axiom that no religion successfully can hold the title 
"absolute" unless its major propositions are broad 
enough to be construed in the terms of various philo- 
sophical methods; to be thinkable, so to say, in more 
than one mental language. 

Following hard upon these characteristics comes the 
vital matter of moral initiative. The educated thought 
of the world has advanced to a degree that precludes the 
recognition of any religion as of universal validity unless 
it possesses intense moral initiative for society and for the 
individual. For, as we have shown in an earlier lecture,^ 
"the incoming century finds many thousands of souls, 
representing all the greater nations and the greater faiths 
of East and West, filled with the conviction that the 
world is capable of being made better, and that humanity 
has the right to be redeemed; that sin is the plague that 
blasts social and personal life, and that they that are 

1 See Lecture IV on " The Sin of Man and the Sacrifice of Christ," p. 148. 



232 Barrows Lectures 

strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not 
to please themselves." This growing conviction cannot 
be put aside: it is resolute, intelligent, serious. It would 
be busy, not with the appeasing of gods, but with the 
redeeming of men. It takes interest in the life that now 
is and in the lives of men that are and that are to be. It 
is looking everywhere for something that has moral 
initiative; for leverage to lift men and nations to a 
higher level of existence. Unabashed, it calls in question 
its own ancestral beliefs, weighs them in the balance, and, 
if it find them wanting, throws them aside and experi- 
ments with the ethics of agnosticism or secularism. The 
moral initiative of the absolute religion shall not be pro- 
duced by the appeal to superstitious dread; for the growth 
of knowledge, the illumination of nature by the light of 
science, is dispelling a thousand terrors that once might 
be invoked in the name of religion. Nor can it proceed 
from the pessimistic view of existence, for although that 
may prompt to deeds of charity and to practices of 
gentleness, its moral force is weakened by every ad- 
vance in civilisation that reveals the worth and ex- 
cellence of the present life as a theatre of human action. 
Nor can the moral initiative be supplied by fatalism, the 
stern creed of necessity; for the trend of modern culture 
is toward a fuller recognition of the freedom of the 
human will and its controlling influence upon life. Moral 
initiative — which is power to grapple with evil and to lay 
hold of good, enthusiasm for righteousness, hatred of sin, 
self-sacrificing effort to redeem others — presupposes a 
deep conviction of the nature of sin as a blight upon 
existence, an offence against God. Its producing causes 
are a high view of the holiness of God, a deep sense of 
the value of man. Given a religion with these as its 



Christianity as the Absolute Beligion 233 

dominant principles, and its significance as a moral 
dynamic shall appear wherever its presence, not in name 
but in reality, extends. 

As we reflect upon the requisite characteristics of an 
absolute religion, one is suggested to us by the prevailing 
temper of the world in this opening century. The mental 
attitude of the most enlightened communities, at the 
present time, is that of expectancy. The principle of 
evolution, to which I have made repeated references, has 
imparted new hopefulness to the world. The world 
begins to realise that it is not chained to a dead past, but 
is free to advance in a living present. Action, upon all 
lines, is being undertaken with pronounced regard for the 
future. Eepugnance to change, which is the distinctive 
mark of unqualified conservatism, is being modified even 
in unlooked-for quarters, apparently by a growing belief 
in the possibility of better things. The face of the 
thinking world looks forward. The religion in which 
the manifold progressive elements in this forward-looking 
age could conceivably find a common basis must be a 
religion in line with the future ; a religion of hope ; a 
religion which is itself an evolutionary force, instinct 
with life, creative, constructive, expansive ; cherishing its 
own history, yet not content therewith ; forgetting, in the 
ardour of its earnestness^ the things which are behind 
and reaching forth unto those things which are before. 

When, with these four characteristics in mind — 
suitability of origin, breadth of philosophical method, 
strength of moral initiative, and hopefulness — I search 
among the greater faiths of mankind for one that might, 
if men desired to use it, be available for the vast and 
beneficent ends of an absolute religion, I look not alto- 
gether in vain. I approach the religion of Christ and 



234 Barrows Lectures 

apply to it the tests of universality. At first I am dis- 
couraged by the many limitations that surround it and 
that appear to disqualify it for a function so exalted. 
I note that it has existed upon earth for almost two 
thousand years, yet has by no means demonstrated its 
universality in terms of numerical progression. Certain 
non-Christian faiths are more extensive numerically, and 
their collective preponderance is overwhelming. I observe 
that, up to this time, its sphere of influence has been 
chiefly among nations of the West ; that its identification 
with Western institutions and manners has been so com- 
plete as to give it, in the eyes of many, the appearance of 
a Western faith. I see that in the West, where its prev- 
alence has been marked, its course has been difficult and 
tumultuous. Controversy has beat upon it like a storm 
against the wall ; schism has wounded it at many points ; 
its adherents have not been in agreement among them- 
selves ; its foes often have been they of its own household. 
I perceive, further, that many of its alleged representa- 
tives have discredited its fair name by lives that violated 
its precepts and set at nought its ideals ; and that govern- 
ments, professing to be its champions, have countenanced 
or committed deeds incompatible with its elementary 
tenets of justice, mercy, and love. 

But when I proceed to examine these limitations, 
I find that they are external, incidental, and no part 
of the essence of the religion of Jesus Christ. They 
are indeed melancholy and hindering accessories which, 
by the frailty or vanity of man, by the malignant in- 
sistance of his prejudices, or the deficiency of his knowl- 
edge, or the madness of his ambition, have fastened them- 
selves upon the religion of Christ as the barnacles upon 
the ship, retarding its progress. But the lamentable 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 235 

accessories are no more of the substance of the religion 
than the barnacles are of the substance of the ship that 
they impede. It is, therefore, not to the unhappy limita- 
tions that attest man's weakness, but to the uncorrupted 
essence of the religion of Jesus Christ that I proceed to 
apply the tests of universality : suitability of origin, 
breadth of philosophical method, strength of moral initia- 
tive, and the spirit of hopefulness. 

So deep and sacred is the national spirit in communities 
of enlightenment and culture, so final the refusal to 
surrender individuality by voluntary submission to an 
alien faith, that no rational discussion of the present 
question is possible until the suitability of origin is 
established. Already in this lecture I have said: The 
West never will abandon its religion in favour of one 
imported from the Orient, nor will the proud and thought- 
ful East ever humble herself to acknowledge the supremacy 
of a Western cult. Such transfers ar^ impossible even 
were they desired ; and undesirable even were they not 
impracticable. 

No humiliation of the national spirit, in any quarter of 
the world, would occur, should there be an intelligent 
movement of convergence upon the religion of Christ as 
the common basis of thought and effort for the time to 
come. If the circumstances attending the origin of any 
faith could prophesy universality, such a forecast of 
destiny appears in the genesis of the religion of Jesus 
Christ. It sprang neither from the ancient and powerful 
seats of oriental empire, nor from the palaces and univer- 
sities of Europe ; but from Palestine, a land whose 
political individuality long before had been obliterated, 
lying midway between East and West, the highway of 
nations, the cross-roads of the world. Its historical ante- 



236 Barrows Lectures 

cedent was the unique community of Israel — a people 
without ethnic relation to Europe or India ; of alien stock ; 
incapable of affiliation with the world ; doomed to an 
earthly immortality of disintegration and suffering ; " de- 
stroyed as a nation, yet indestructible as a people;" with- 
out political or military influence, yet incomparable in moral 
and spiritual power. Of Israel, according to the flesh, 
Christ came. The veil of mystery enshrouded His Birth. 
The courtyard of a travellers' rest house was His place of 
nativity; the chances of a traveller's lot were the portion 
of His manhood ; the bitterness of a death of ignominy 
was His reward. Yet in His own speech and self- 
consciousness, in the assured belief of His disciples, in 
the august tradition that, by many centuries, preceded 
Him and foretold His coming, was the persistent note of 
universality. The most sacred heirloom of Israel was the 
Abrahamic promise, "In thee shall all families of 
the earth be blessed."^ The fundamental duty of His 
ordained messengers was to ignore national distinctions 
and preach His Gospel to the whole creation ; the point 
of view of His own self-consciousness was that of the 
Light of the world, who, if He should be lifted up from 
the earth, would draw all men unto Himself.^ If the 
commanding influence of this Christ should now convince 
the East, it would be but an extension of His inscrutable 
triumph who already has spoken the word of His peace to 
barbarous and brutal tribes of the West, transforming 
their manners, co-ordinating their undeveloped powers, 
laying in their midst the foundations of a kingdom that is 
righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.^ If 
the aggressive and power-loving West has found it blessed 

1 Cf. Gen. 12 : 1-3 ; 18 : 18 ; 22 : 15-18. 2 John 12 : 32. 

3Eom.l4:17. 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 237 

to be conquered by that Warrior without a sword, to be 
ruled by that King without an army, the convergence of 
the thoughtful East upon the religion of the Nazarene 
would involve, in like manner, no slightest surrender of 
the national spirit. 

If we test the religion of Jesus Christ as to its breadth 
of philosophical method, its thinkableness in the terms of 
more than one intellectual system, the evidence to that 
effect is found to be both internal and external. It is 
impressive to note that Christ conceives of Himself as 
the Light of the world. He speaks of His Death as the 
giving of Himself for the life of the world.^ His 
teachings contain nothing of an exclusive or sectarian 
character. As He knows Himself to be the manifested 
God, He also knows that the Spirit of God shall inter- 
pret and reveal Him k) the understandings and hearts of 
all teachable persons the world over.^ There is no reser- 
vation attached to His promise: "He that followeth Me 
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of 
life."^ And so, with complete assurance of the thinkable- 
ness of His religion in the terms of all the systems of 
human thought, He leaves with His disciples this charge 
as He withdraws His Bodily Presence: "Ye shall be wit- 
nesses unto Me, unto the uttermost part of the earth."* 
No other thought concerning His relation to mankind 
appears to enter His mind than that His illuminating 
words and His sacrificial work alike are for the use and 
advantage of the undivided human race. That those 
who were most closely associated with Him in the days 
of His Flesh and best understood His thought thus ap- 
prehended it, appears from the whole range of the Apos- 

1 Cf. John 6 : 51. 2 Cf. John 14 : 16, 17, 26 ; 15 : 26 ; 16 : 7-11. 

3 C/. John 8: 12. * Acts 1:8. 



238 Barrows Lectures 

tolic teaching. They conceived their message to be so 
broad that it could be translated without difficulty, not 
into the vernaculars of the lip only, but into the vernacu- 
lars of the mind, of all races. For Christ Himself was 
not, in their thought, ethnic, but universal ; not the citizen 
of a local state, but the Incarnate Representative of Hu- 
manity even as also the Incarnate Manifestation of Deity. 
So cries St. Paul: "Men of every nation are renewed in 
His image; — where there is neither Greek nor Jew, cir- 
cumcision nor uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, bond 
nor free; but Christ is all and in all."^ And St. John, 
beholding in vision the gathering throng of those who, 
trained in many philosophical methods, have found Christ 
interpreting Himself in the terms of all, declares: "I 
beheld, and lo, a great multitude which no man could 
number, of all nations and kindreds and peoples and 
tongues, stood before [Him] and cried, Salvation to our 
God that sitteth upon the Throne."^ The most impressive 
experience of my intellectual life has been the discovery, 
during these three years of humble preparation for this 
Eastern lectureship, that I, a Christian of the West, 
scarcely had begun to realise the absolutely world-wide 
scope of the fundamental ideas of the religion of Christ 
until I beheld them illuminated by Eastern philosophy 
and stated in terms of Oriental thought. Then it 
dawned upon me that the West needs the East, quite as 
much as the East needs the West, if humanity is to 
measure the depth and height and breadth and length of 
the Gospel of the Son of God. It is reported, in one of 
the Old Testament chronicles, that the Queen of Sheba, 
who long had heard of the magnificence of the temple of 
Solomon, at length paid a visit thereto. Overpowered 

1 Col. 3: 11. 2Bev. 7:9. 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 239 

by splendours whose realities exceeded anticipation, she 
cried: "Behold the half was not told me; thy wisdom and 
prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard." ^ Even 
so had I, a Christian of the West, been taught to believe 
that in Chris't are all the treasures of wisdom and knowl- 
edge, and that His relation to the world so involves the 
very substance of life as to interpret itself, not only to 
the conscience, but to the intellect of every man. But 
when, leaving the familiar intellectual environment of 
my fathers, I sought the atmosphere of Eastern culture, 
only to find the leading conceptions of Christianity 
taking on there a new wealth of meaning that came to 
me as with the glory of a fresh revelation, I said in my 
joy: Behold the half was not told me; Thy wisdom, O 
Christ, exceedeth the fame which I heard! 

Suitability of origin and breadth of philosophical 
method are not the only tests of universality which one 
must apply to the uncorrupted essence of the religion of 
Jesus Christ, in the effort to ascertain its fitness to be 
the absolute religion. Strength of moral initiative and 
hopefulness must be there ; or, being weighed in the bal- 
ance, it shall be found wanting. 

Strength of moral initiative, power to make men better, 
is the distinctive form in which the religion of Christ 
acts as a force in human life. Every religion has a 
reason for its existence. The scope of that reason deter- 
mines in each case the sphere of influence of the religion 
to which it is attached. Ceremonialism may be the 
reason for the existence of a religion. It may continue 
to live for the purpose of keeping up certain ceremonies 
handed down from antiquity. The ceremonies may be 
worthy of maintenance, but the possible sphere of influ- 

IC/.I Kings 10:1-13. 



240 Barrows Lectures 

ence for a religion that exists only to maintain these 
ceremonies cannot extend to those who have no interest 
in the ceremonies and have no desire for their mainte- 
nance. The propitiation of gods may be the reason for 
the existence of a religion. Its continuance may be based 
on the theory of angry, cruel, or tyrannical deities, who 
will cause pain and loss unless a certain tribute is paid to 
them. Fear, the dread of disaster, the belief that the 
world is haunted by dangerous and malign spirits, may 
serve to perpetuate systems of worship and sacrifice, in 
the highest degree impressive. Nevertheless, the sphere 
of influence open to such religions cannot extend to those 
who believe in one God only, and in Him as the most 
faithful, most loving, most self-sacrificing of Friends; who 
needs not to be propitiated, inasmuch as He Himself has 
suffered for us that He might deliver us from our sins 
and reconcile us unto Himself. Despair may be the 
reason for the existence of a religion — despair prompted 
by the inherent misery of life. Belief in God may van- 
ish ; the desire to live may perish ; escape from the wretch- 
edness of finite being may be the goal of effort; and 
patient endurance, deeds of gentleness, habits of purity, 
may be the rule of conduct. Nevertheless, potent as such 
a religion is among those who can live without God and 
without hope in the world, its sphere of influence never 
can extend to regions where finite existence is held to be 
a boon and not a curse. 

The religion of Jesus Christ finds the reason for its 
existence, not in ceremonialism, not in the propitiation of 
gods, not in despair, but in the effort to make man better. 
It rests on the presumption that good, not evil, is the 
normal lot of man; that love, not hatred, is the temper of 
the heart of God; that sin, not fate, is the barrier stand- 



Christianity as the Absolute Beligion 241 

ing between man and happiness, the plague whose poison 
courses through the world. The religion of Jesus Christ 
exists through its strength of moral initiative. But 
for this it would have perished in its youth, for all faiths 
conspired to crush it out. But it was indestructible; not 
because it could shelter itself behind the ramparts of 
military power; not because it appealed to the fears or 
the lusts of mankind ; but because, by the Divine purpose 
of Him who gave it to the world, it contained power 
which, in these latter days, open-minded men of all faiths 
are coming to realise as the thing most needed upon 
earth; power to deal with the plague of sin; power to 
purge the soul of its corruption; power to break the 
shackles of corroding habit; power to awaken sleeping 
impulses of good, to implant new affections, to bring in a 
new order of moral existence, for the individual, for the 
family, for the nation, for the world. 

With this strength of moral initiative the religion of 
Jesus Christ joins hopefulness, which is the fundamental 
condition of social recovery and reform. Ceremonialism 
and the appeal to fear doubtless have their place in the 
sum of influences that promote the moral education of the 
race. But, unless one quite misreads such signs of the 
times as the growing intercourse of nations, the spread of 
knowledge, the advance of democracy, and the revolt 
from superstition, the age is coming fast when the co- 
operation of all educated and right-minded men for the 
betterment of humanity shall prove the Divine insight 
ihat was given of old to that Christian Apostle who said: 
"We are saved by hope." ^ A ceremonialism that be- 
comes an end in itself, existing to perpetuate a method 
of antiquity ; a bitter creed of fear that makes of one's 

lEom. 8:24. 



242 Barrows Lectures 

mortal life a weary effort to avert the wrath or caprice of 
gods; a doctrine of despair that turns thought inward, 
in sad refusal to believe in external reality, in mute, sub- 
missive separation from the glorious energies that gather 
volume with each new struggle for victory — these are 
religions that have won immortal distinction in history 
by their loyalty to the past, by the sincerity of their 
adherents and the brilliancy of their leaders, by their 
enormous contributions to the religious development of the 
world. But, in the unfoldings of time, and with the ad- 
vent of forces, scientific and social, that have opened the 
world, developed its resources, augmented its knowledge, 
and altered its point of view, that which humanity waits 
for as the charter of redemption is a religion of hope, 
a religion in line with the future, a religion in sympathy 
with all the people, a religion that develops individual 
character and educates men to know and claim and ex- 
ercise their God-given rights of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. And of such a spirit is the religion 
of the eternal Son of God. Hopefulness is its essence. 
In the synagogue of Nazareth He opened His lips and 
spake, whilst men wondered at the gracious words that 
proceeded out of his mouth: "The Spirit of the Lord God 
is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the 
Gospel to the poor. He hath sent Me to heal the broken- 
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recover- 
ing of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."^ 
The whole attitude and mind of Christ encourage hope. 
None so well as He understood the sinfulness of sin; 
none so deeply proved the mysteries of evil that poison 
society and draw men to perdition ; none so deeply drank 

IC/. Luke 4: 16, 22. 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 243 

of the cup of suffering. In the solitariness of sacrificial 
love He trod the wine-press alone; and, bowed to the 
earth in the travail of His soul, endured the agony of 
spiritual conflict, in which His sweat was, as it were, 
great drops of blood falling down to the ground. He 
shunned not the cross, from which He might have escaped ; 
but, with words of forgiveness and blessing on His lips, 
tasted death for every man, the just for the unjust, that 
He might reconcile the world unto Himself. Then, 
breaking the bonds of the grave, and casting away its cords 
from Him, ascending up on high, leading captivity cap- 
tive, and giving gifts unto men, He became the Author 
of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.^ His 
mission is to make all things new.^ He, the risen and 
glorified Christ, is the Author of a living hope in every 
soul that truly receives Him.^ If any man be in Christ, 
he is a new creature ; old things are passed away ; all 
things are become new.* Christ is the Friend of man. 
By the mystery of His Holy Incarnation He has identi- 
fied Himself with human life ; and by the perpetual influ- 
ence -of His Spirit He has introduced into the world an 
expectation of good, an appreciation of liberty, a zeal for 
righteousness, a grace for co-operative helpfulness, an 
immortal hope, by which, for all who are influenced there- 
by, the world becomes a new world, and all the conditions 
of life are transformed. 

As I close this lecture, in which I have ventured to 
give utterance to some of the most treasured convictions 
of my mind, as well as to some of the deepest longings of 
my heart, may I carry the argument to one further and 
final stage? I have assumed that a desire conceivably 

1 Cf. Heb. 5 : 7-9. 2 Cf. Rev. 21 : 5. 

3 Cf. 1 Pet. 1:3-5. * Cf. 2 Cor. 5 : 17. 



244 Bm^rows Lectures 

might exist among liberal-minded men of different faiths, 
who have a common wish for the world's betterment, to 
advance to a common basis of belief, which should be to 
them of the nature of an Absolute Religion. Upon this 
assumption I have examined, not the highly localised and 
specialised forms of denominational Christianity, but the 
uncorrupted essence of the religion of Christ, to ascertain 
whether, judged by the tests of suitability of origin, 
breadth of philosophical method, strength of moral 
initiative, and the spirit of hopefulness, it is prepared to 
furnish such a basis of belief and action for men of diverse 
training and tradition, who entertain in common a con- 
viction that the world is capable of being made better, 
and that sin is the plague that blasts social and personal 
life. 

If, now, it may be further assumed that the religion 
of Christ in its uncorrupted essence contains these 
several notes of universality, and might therefore be a 
basis of common belief and action such as that of which 
we are in search, there remains only to be considered the 
relation of the East to this absolute religion. Practical 
questions of the highest interest are raised when the 
imagination is permitted to conceive a general acceptance 
of the religion of Christ by the most cultured and cos- 
mopolitan spirits of India and of the Far East. How 
could such a movement be effected if there existed 
in many minds a desire for it? It is foreign to the 
genius of Christianity to impose itself by authority 
upon any people or upon any man. There is nothing 
in the teaching or example of Christ to justify the gov- 
ernment of a state in restricting or coercing the beliefs 
of its subjects. Religion is an affair between the soul 
and God, and the religious liberty of the individual is 



Christianity as the Absolute Religion 245 

a right upon which the State never can infringe with- 
out injustice, and for the protection of which men may 
well resist and defy the authority of the State. Further- 
more, the wholesale imposition of Christianity upon a 
people, by Act of Government, even if it were to be 
tolerated, would be a travesty of the truth. The kingdom 
of God Cometh not with observation.^ "The kingdom of 
heaven," said Christ, "is like to a grain of mustard seed 
which a man took and sowed in his field ; which indeed is 
the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest 
among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of 
the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."^ Nor 
could such a movement as this be brought about by any 
course of action which would involve the surrender or 
compromise of that national spirit which, I fondly hope, 
is growing in India. As a constant reader of Indian news- 
papers I note with joy the frequent recognition of that 
spirit as one of the cherished ideals of the future. It is a 
spirit in no sense inimical to the Sovereign Ruler of 
India, but rather a normal development of the best life of 
this vast realm. So was it said the other day, with great 
thoughtf ulness : "There are signs that a vague national 
idea is floating in the air. What form it will take in the 
complex organisation of Indian polity it is not possible 
to foretell. It is a task for some of our best men to note 
carefully, and make use of the sentiment and the oppor- 
tunity. For herein is the best impetus that can be given 
to national progress ; more than governments or economic 
revolutions can effect."^ Such sentiments honour those 
who utter them. No acceptance of Christianity that 
insulted or humiliated such a national ideal could be 

1 Luke 17 : 20. 2 Matt. 13 : 31, 32. 

3 Editorial from The Hindu, quoted in Indu-Prakash, August 4, 1902. 



246 Barrows Lectures 

entertained for a moment. How, then, could this move- 
ment, now theoretically present to our minds, be effected, 
if there existed a desire for it ? It could come about only 
as, one by one, the open-minded, the pure in heart, the 
merciful, the meek, the lovers of humanity, the believers 
in the betterment of the world, should see eye to eye, and 
draw together, and learn to trust one another as brethren 
in Christ Jesus; and for His sake, and for humanity's 
sake, to make the sacrifices and face the opposition that 
might arise by reason of their confession of the faith of 
Christ. I do not underestimate the sacrifices that would 
be called for in the present structure of Indian society. 
I do not forget the surrender of social distinction and the 
severance of social ties that must for a time be endured 
in the present state of things, were any large number of 
educated men in India to acknowledge the religion of 
Christ as the absolute religion. But such is my assurance 
of the power of Christ to overcome obstacles, and of His 
religion to modify social institutions, that it is my con- 
viction that if, by common consent, a considerable num- 
ber of educated leaders would make the sacrifice in the 
spirit of meekness, their act, prompted by the noblest 
motives and sustained by the most unselfish devotion, 
would do more than any other thing in the world to 
crystallise into reality that vaguely noble national ideal 
which, as one of your writers tells us, "is in the air." I 
would not have these men cast discredit on the faiths of 
their forefathers, nor speak against traditions precious to 
their own flesh and blood. I would have them face the 
future and claim their own heritage and right in the 
religion most in line with the constructive forces that 
shall shape the future. When I permit myself to con- 
template the blessing that would come to the Western 



Christianity as the Absolute Beligion 247 

world if the great, religious East were to become the 
teacher and interpreter of the religion of Jesus Christ, 
my heart burns within me. Again and again in the 
course of these lectures I have reiterated my conviction 
that the Christianity of the West has been, in many 
ways, an inadequate and imperfect illustration of the 
uncorrupted essence of the faith of Christ. It is not to 
us that the East should look for an example for what the 
power of Christ can effect in the redeeming and sancti- 
fying of nations. All that the West has of moral 
strength and social purity and spiritual power it owes to 
Jesus Christ. But evil is mingled with its good and 
darkness with its light. Not to us, but to Him, shall the 
far-seeing eyes of the East look when the educated circles 
of the Orient are prepared seriously to consider the rela- 
tion of Christianity to the future of the world. Not from 
us, but from Him and from His Holy Scriptures of truth, 
shall the deep spiritual insight of the East receive the 
revelation that shall be incorporated with its own tradi- 
tions and assimilated into its own institutions. In the 
day when the vigour of the West and the insight of the 
East shall be joined by a true union of hearts for the 
interpretation and practice of the faith of Jesus Christ, 
then, and not till then, shall the Unspeakable Gift of 
God be understood, appreciated, and expressed on earth. 



SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON JAPAN 

Among the great non -Christian nations Japan is the 
first to come in contact with Western powers without war ; 
the first to adopt a constitution with representative insti- 
tutions, and one that guarantees religious liberty ; the 
first to abolish trial by torture, to overthrow caste dis- 
tinctions, and to make all equal before the law ; the first 
and only one to gain freedom from exterritoriality, which 
this patriotic and sensitive people justly hated, and yet 
which Western powers as justly imposed until 1900. She 
is also the first non-Christian nation to cover her terri- 
tory with schools and make education universal. 

A nation of forty-five million people within the brief 
space of one generation has radically changed its govern- 
ment, laws, social structure, and has greatly modified and 
elevated its ideals of family life, its ethical standards, and 
its religious thought. There is nothing in all history 
that compares with this swift upward transformation. 

So great a change is possible only when there is a 
highly developed moral and religious basis in the hearts 
of the people. The history of Japan has some of the 
noblest characters that can be found anywhere outside of 
the influence of Christian teachings. It contains the 
story that is nearest the story of the Cross of Christ — 
that of Sakura Sogoro, who gave himself to be crucified 
that he might save the people of his province from cruel 
oppression and ruin. The records of different parts of 
the empire contain numerous examples of noblest self- 
sacrifice for others. 

Of the four ethical characteristics of the people, as 

248 



Supplementary Note on Japan 249 

given by the Reverend T. Harada, the first is the Sense 
of Ought, Everything must be sacrificed on the altar of 
duty. As one of their proverbs says: "The most sacred 
relations must give way before great duties." Knowing 
that the path of duty would lead to certain death, there 
are many instances scattered through their history of 
women and youths as well as of men who unhesitatingly 
chose to surrender life. "Full well I knew this course 
must end in death," is a line of one of their well-known 
poems. 

Self-sacrifice is the highest point in Christian ethics. 
It is also the height of moral living in Japanese history. 
Whatever may be said of the moral degradation of the 
people in certain lines, through it all shines the clear 
light of this noble principle of self-sacrifice that saves a 
nation from political and social corruption. This prin- 
ciple has won so deep a place in the moral life of Japan 
that the people have no difficulty in understanding the 
self-sacrifice of Christ. Before an audience of a thousand 
teachers, a professor in the Imperial University who had 
written and spoken strong words against Christianity 
recently said: "Jesus was crucified between two thieves. 
Who knows the names of the thieves? No one in the 
whole wide world. But there is no one under heaven 
who does not know the name of Jesus. Why ? Because 
of his noble morality. He is immortal." 

There is no room here to follow out other lines of 
Japanese ethics. This is enough to show that the swift 
and successful adoption, on the part of a great non- 
Christian nation, of new government, new laws, new social 
ideals based on the worth and dignity of the individual, 
was possible because of their already highly developed 
moral nature. 



250 Barrows Lectures 

Their religious life also is no small factor in their 
moral living. If condensed into one sentence, this reli- 
gious life rests on faith in the gods, who always have been 
represented by the Imperial Line ; which (Shinto) faith 
was modified, on the one hand, by the Buddhist religion 
and philosophy, and, on the other, by Confucian ethics. 

Ancestor- worship, which we of the West have not only 
outgrown but regard as a sign of deep heathenism, has 
its noble side and has been an immense blessing to the 
whole East. In the pantheistic stage, through which in 
the divine economy mankind must pass, in all probability 
there could never have been any permanent family except 
by the moral aid of ancestor-worship. 

Buddhism, as it stands in modern Japan, has two 
widely diifferent aspects. With scholars it tends to phi- 
losophy ; with the masses, to idolatrous superstition. 
But, nevertheless, every candid student must see that it 
has been of untold benefit in strengthening the religious 
nature, and also in inculcating peace and pity, as well as 
in teaching the civilising influences of architecture, 
sculpture, painting. It has greatly encouraged literature 
and love of the beautiful. 

Confucius's priceless contribution to Japanese civilisa- 
tion is the Five Relations. This great moral prophet 
taught these relations in this order : parents and children ; 
lord and retainer ; husband and wife ; brothers and sisters ; 
and friends. China has always emphasised the first, and 
her over-emphasis of this one relation, with its ancestor- 
worship, is what holds her back from the acceptance of 
modern civilisation. Japan reversed the order of the 
first two relations and placed high in her ethics the rela- 
tion of lord and retainer, with the worship of the Impe- 
rial House and loyalty that knows no fear of death. This 



Supplementary Note on Japan 251 

made her a martial people, fond of daring adventures, 
and fitted her for intercourse with Western nations on 
terms of mutual respect and benefit. 

This mingling of various religious and moral ideas 
brought forth some noble manifestations of spiritual 
living. It is sometimes said that Japan is a nation with- 
out a religion. It is not true now and never has been. Old 
Japan has her prophets who can be accounted for in no 
other way so well as by ascribing to them the leading of 
the Holy Spirit of God. The Reverend T. Miyagawa, in 
a recent address to a body of missionaries, called atten- 
tion to some examples of this, one of which is as follows : 
Nakal Tojio speaks thus of God: "There is a great Lord 
over all. This Lord is the great and only Spirit. He is 
the Lord and Father of heaven and earth and all things. 
From the mighty universe to the tiny mote, from the 
eternity to the moment, there is nothing outside of his 
glorious regard. His mystery fills all space — God of 
God, Spirit of Spirit." One more is worthy of the atten- 
tion of the readers of this book : Muro Kyuso two hun- 
dred and fifty years ago said: "Think not that God is 
distant, but seek him in the heart, for the heart is the 
house of God." 

Now, ancestor-worship is never able to withstand 
international intercourse. It is of necessity a narrow 
religion until it breaks forth into the universal — the 
worship of the God and Father of us all. Japanese 
Buddhism, itself a great departure from original Bud- 
dhism, is being again greatly modified by modern science 
and Christian ethics. And the Confucian relations are 
being widely interpreted in terms of Christian thought. 

In other words, the moral and religious history of 
Japan reveals a divine preparation for the larger and final 



252 Barrows Lectures 

message of God in his Son. In the fullness of time God 
calls upon his children to give this people through old 
and new channels the most complete expression of Chris- 
tian truth. At the same time the spirit in which we do 
this is important. We must believe that such a people, 
with such a moral and religious history, will not only 
receive Christian truth, but will also contribute something 
to the fuller interpretation of the exhaustless Gospel of 
Christ. We apart from them cannot be made perfect in 
the knowledge of God. 

Christian truth naturally will first appeal to the 
Japanese on ethical lines. In three important respects 
Japan has already welcomed the teachings of Christ, 
confessedly recognising their superiority and universality. 
Chastity for man as well as for woman ; the humanitarian 
spirit as exemplified in what is perhaps the largest Red 
Cross Society in the world; and the worth and dignity 
of the individual — these are the distinctive contributions 
of Christianity to the ethical life of New Japan. 

What are called the supernatural elements in Chris- 
tianity become at once stumbling-blocks to intelligent 
Japanese. From a people still held in the pantheistic 
philosophy of the past, the doctrines of a personal God, 
a Divine and Risen Saviour, and personal immortality 
meet with objections, especially when they suspect that 
the scholars of the West are outgrowing these beliefs. 
Personality in God seems to reduce him to very small 
terms in comparison with limitless "Heaven," or the 
vague and unknowable "Soul of the Universe." The 
Resurrection is a far greater stumbling-block than the 
Cross. Their idea of immortality is that of a people, of 
society, of the family, and of a name, rather than that of 
the individual. 



Supplementary Note on Japan 253 

Under these circumstances it is most fitting that 
representative Christian scholars should be sent direct 
from Christian institutions of learning to give, to the 
educated classes of the East, the reasons for the faith 
within them. It has always been normal for the Church 
to send forth her missionaries with the Gospel of the 
Crucified and Risen Christ. Just because this is the 
definite work of Mission Boards, whose one purpose is 
to make converts and organise believers into churches, 
the missionary, however wide his learning, labors under 
the suspicion, more or less marked, of being a hireling 
and a propagandist. But for a great university to send 
out Christian scholars, sympathetic with the religious 
thought of the world, yet reverently believing in the 
Divine Son of God, is not only a most timely aid, but is 
a most welcome method of approaching the scholarly and 
influential classes. Learning is binding the world into 
one, and it is meet that consecrated learning should have 
consecrated messengers to bear direct from the university 
this greatest of all truths to the thoughtful classes of the 
East. 

Mr. J. R. Mott, sent by Christian students to the 
students of the East, had wide and abiding successes that 
would have been impossible had he gone under a Mission 
Board. The work of young men for young men has won 
so high a place in Japan that at the tenth anniversary of 
the Young Men's Christian Association in Tokyo, Baron 
Maejima, an ex-cabinet officer, said: "I firmly believe we 
must have religion as the basis of our national and 
personal welfare. No matter how large an army or navy 
we may have, unless we have righteousness at the founda- 
tion of our national existence we shall fall short of highest 
success. I do not hesitate to say that we must rely upon 



254 Barrows Lectures 

religion for our highest welfare. And when I look about 
me to see what religion we may best rely upon, I am 
convinced that the religion of Christ is the one most full 
of strength and promise for the nation." 

The point to bear in mind is that a most effective 
Christian work is possible outside of the organised work 
of missions and their churches, by men sent directly by 
students and institutions of learning. 

President Charles Cuthbert Hall, a university scholar 
sent by a university to the scholarly classes of the East, 
met with multitudes of people who are indifferent to the 
work of missionaries. He would not have been welcomed 
to halls of learning in Japan, and most certainly he 
would not have been invited to lecture in the Imperial 
University at Tokyo, had he been a missionary of the 
Church. Such work as his is exceptionally powerful, not 
only in overthrowing prejudice, but in creating a sym- 
pathetic state of mind towards the vital truths of Chris- 
tianity, and also in producing positive conviction with 
many individuals. 

This does not mean that the work of missions 
is weak and that organised Christianity is of little 
value. ' On the contrary, the work of these exceptional 
messengers of Christ would be impossible but for what 
the Church through her various missions has already 
splendidly accomplished. The foundations are broadly 
laid, and the effects of Christian teaching are left for 
good far outside of the growing churches. There never 
was a great nation permeated with Christian truth in 
ethical lines so rapidly as Japan has been. And there 
never was a time when Christian scholarship had such a 
grand opportunity of impressing the leading minds of a 
nation as it has now in Japan. 



Supplementary Note on Japan 255 

What the university has begun to do should be pro- 
phetic of another needed movement. Commerce, too, is 
binding the world into one. And we wait the day when 
successful men of business, so many of whom are splendid 
givers, and so many of whose lives are a protest against 
materialism, will commission one and another of their 
men of faith to visit these Eastern men of business, not 
only in order to witness to the necessity of commercial 
morality, but also to proclaim the necessity of the religious 
spirit which alone makes commerce an unqualified bless- 
ing to the race. 

John H. De Forest. 

Sendai, Japan, 1903. 



AUG 2 1905 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



B^,.( 



